


The New Deal

by Closer



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Brotherhood, Child Abuse, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-11
Updated: 2011-11-11
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 33,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Closer/pseuds/Closer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harvey Specter, second year law student at Harvard, was walking home one night when he found a teenaged runaway named Mike freezing to death on his doorstep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This story contains references to and discussions of child abuse and abuse survivorhood. There's no direct portrayal, but it's a fairly major plot point and there is some description of PTSD-induced behaviors/reactions.
> 
> Originally written for the [Suits meme.](http://suits-meme.livejournal.com/1484.html?thread=851148#t851148)
> 
> Thanks to ArsenicJade for lawpicking and accuracy-checking the story, particularly the hearing scene. Any remaining inaccuracies are the result of my stubborn adherence to drama over realism.
> 
> Elloras on Tumblr did an [awesome photoset for this fic!](http://elloras.tumblr.com/post/153342831071/favorite-fics-the-new-deal-by-closer-look-you)

It's December, 1998. Bill Clinton's in the White House (maybe not for long; impeachment hearings are set for the new year) and Barenaked Ladies are on the radio a lot.

Harvey knows the former, because he's following the legal twists like all the other students. He's sketchy on the latter because at the moment he's in the middle of 2L at Harvard Law and despite giving every impression of never working, working is basically all he does. Learning how to make what he does seem effortless is, he thinks, one more part of the training that started with Jessica plucking him out of juvie and will end --

Well, in a Senior Partner position at Pearson Hardman, but he doesn't know that yet. Right now his dreams are a little simpler: beating Scotty in Moot Court, getting his JD in at least the top five of his class, passing the Bar, and going to work at Pearson Hardman.

So he does things like this, where he goes out with his classmates on a Friday night to a local club and pretends to drink five or six Jack & Cokes while nursing the same one all night, then ditches out with the intimation that he's found a pretty girl. After which he goes to the library and studies for a few hours before heading back to the tiny apartment which is ugly and awful but cheap and all his.

It's just coming up on one in the morning, freezing cold and snowing. His scholarship pays for his books and classes, and for his rent, but he has a few little student loans for things like warm clothes and food. For the first time in a long time his boots are leather, his coat is thick black wool, and he's grateful for both as the wind cuts its way down the street, blowing the edges of the heavy coat around his legs. It's a miserable night, and if he didn't have an image to maintain he might have found a quiet place to sleep in the library instead of walking home. He wouldn't be the first law student to do so.

At first he thinks the shadow in the doorway of the building is a bag of trash. His neighbors have a habit of pulling that bullshit and Harvey gets pissed off about it and then they're good for a month and then they do it again. But it's big for a trash bag, and oddly striped --

His brain finally makes sense of what his eyes are showing him, sorting out the bag's creases into arms, the strange stripes into hands and a face, the corners into feet. There's a man sitting in his doorway, wearing a long-sleeved shirt but no coat or gloves, head slumped over.

It's 1998, and most people don't have cellphones yet, so Harvey thinks detachedly that he's going to have to climb over the dead body in his apartment building's doorway to get to a phone to call the police.

He's standing there, staring at the body, keys jingling lightly in his gloved hand, snow beginning to pile on his shoulders, when the dead body moves.

"Holy fucking -- " Harvey jerks back, startled, as the arms unfold and the tipped head straightens and the eyes open. "Jesus Christ!"

It's not a man, hardly more than a boy, looking up at him in dazed surprise. He has bright blue eyes, and shaggy dark-blond hair rising in a widow's peak over his young face.

They stare at each other for a minute or two, and then the boy scrambles up, out of the doorway and down into the slurry that's beginning to form on the walkway. He's wearing sneakers, no socks, jeans. He tucks the ends of the black shirt's sleeves over his hands.

"Sorry, dude," he says. "I was waiting for someone."

It's 1998, and Harvey Specter is twenty-three years old and not a moron.

"Who?" he asks.

"Jamie," the boy answers promptly.

There's a list of names next to the buzzer box. Jamie Allen used to live in Harvey's apartment, and he knows that because he never bothered to change out the nameplate.

"Bullshit," Harvey says.

He wants to tell the kid to scram, that nobody in this building has anything worth stealing, but the kid shivers and nods and his fingernails are blue from the cold.

"There's a steam vent," the kid says, pointing. Harvey knows this; everyone walking through the door gets a blast of warm, soap-scented air from the basement laundry room as they unlock it. "I was just trying to stay warm."

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"Nice try."

"Sixteen."

Harvey just gives him a look.

"Sixteen next month," the boy mutters.

Harvey knows better than to ask where the kid's parents are. He also knows better than to ask why he isn't in a shelter. This time of year the shelters are full; for a kid like this they'd call his parents and then CPS and even if they let him stay, pretending to be eighteen, shelters are...not good sometimes.

He was, five minutes ago, contemplating the idea of a dead young man in his doorway. He has no intention of making it a reality, but freezing waifs aren't his problem.

Harvey makes a split-second decision, because he's cold and tired and doesn't want to stand here all night and anyway even if he leaves the kid here he has to go inside to call the police, so.

"What's your name?" he asks, as the boy begins edging away.

"Mike."

"Just Mike?"

"Just Mike to you."

Harvey grins. There's a spark of defiance there he likes. "Look, you only have my word that I'm not a perv, and I only have your word you're not a junkie or a thief," he says, unlocking the door and swinging it open. "But I have to make this offer because even if we were, we'd still be human beings. You want to come inside and warm up?"

Mike looks longingly at the shaft of yellow light from the inside hallway, then suspiciously at Harvey.

"I'm Harvey," Harvey tells him. "I'm a law student. Promise I'm not a serial killer."

"That's exactly what a serial killer would say," Mike points out.

"Suit yourself," Harvey replies, and walks inside. But he leaves the door open as he unlocks his apartment. When it swings shut, there's the creak of cheap sneakers behind him.

His apartment is almost too warm after the walk from the library, but while he's setting his bag down and hanging up his coat, prying off his boots, Mike gravitates to the hissing radiator on the other side of the room. In the light from the shadeless bulb overhead, he can see the way the shirt hangs on Mike, a combination of damp and skinniness, and the dark wet stains on the cuffs of his jeans where he's trod through snow.

"Were you actually planning to survive outside on a night like this in wet clothing?" Harvey asks, going to the kitchenette and taking a bottle of milk out of the fridge.

"Steam vent," Mike replies.

"Surely you could have found some twenty-four-hour drugstore to loiter in," Harvey says.

"They kicked me out after an hour," Mike answers. Well, he's marginally resourceful, anyway. Harvey goes to the doorless closet that sits in the hall between bedroom and bathroom, taking out a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt.

"Go warm yourself up," he says, tossing them to Mike, who catches them with hands whose fingers don't quite work properly. "Shower's through there."

Mike goes rigid.

"Door locks," Harvey adds casually.

When they were little, his brother used to bring home stray cats -- also dogs, and the occasional squirrel. Harvey learned early that the best way to, say, get a stray cat out from behind the couch was to ignore it until it came out on its own. So he goes about his business, digging in a cupboard for various canisters and bottles, until the soft shuffling noises behind him die off. When he turns around, there's a pair of wet sneakers by the door. Water runs in the bathroom. Harvey finds a tupperware box of leftover chili and dumps it into one pot (microwaves are a luxury he vows one day he will have) while he pours milk into the other.

The trick to really proper hot chocolate is complicated. The chocolate has to melt in the milk, which has to heat slowly, then you add sugar and just a little bit of cinnamon and stir it for a while until it's thick. When Mike emerges, Harvey's still at the stove, which seems to reassure him; he sits down on the threadbare sofa and puts his hands in his lap and is very still.

His fingers have lost that scary white tinge, though, and his cheeks are flushed. He's stolen a pair of Harvey's socks, a good sign, and a little of the wariness has left his eyes.

"How long have you been on your own?" Harvey asks, stirring the chili. It has beef and chopped up kielbasa and lots of beans in it; if nothing else this manchild is going to get one good meal before Harvey turns him over to Child Protective Services.

"Two days," Mike replies.

"Where'd you spend last night?"

"On a bus," Mike replies.

"You left somewhere presumably warmer and came here?"

"Well, I didn't think about checking the weather patterns," Mike replies, and Harvey laughs.

"Yeah, okay, fair enough," he says, pouring the hot chocolate carefully into a Yankees mug for himself and a Harvard-branded mug (given to him at Orientation, a weird gift he's always thought) for Mike. The chili goes into cereal bowls, and voila. Late night dinner.

"It's not fine dining," he warns, as he passes a bowl and the mug to Mike, who sniffs the cocoa suspiciously before sipping.

"Thank you," Mike says. Whoever raised the kid taught him manners, at least. He takes a careful bite of the chili, then sits back on the couch, tucks his legs up so that the bowl is cradled between thigh and chest, and begins to shovel the food into his mouth. Harvey just settles in the chair at his desk, the only other place to sit, and sips his cocoa.

"Yankees," Mike says, nodding at his mug, mouth full of food. "Good choice."

"Thanks. You a New Yorker?"

Mike nods, then looks like he wishes he hadn't. But he keeps eating.

"Why come to Cambridge?" Harvey prods gently.

"First bus leaving New York, furthest I could get on a budget," Mike replies. There's something he wants to add, Harvey can see that, but he doesn't. "You?"

"Harvard," Harvey says.

Mike looks around the little living room slash dining room slash kitchen slash study, then looks back at Harvey like he's wondering what a rich Ivy League boy is doing in a dump like Harvey's.

"I'm on a scholarship," Harvey tells him.

Mike gets a subtly wistful look, like a scholarship is more than he can dream of -- like Harvey just said _I'm the prince of Sweden, slumming it._

"Is there anyone I can call for you?" Harvey asks, and Mike shakes his head. "Nobody worrying about you? Girlfriend, boyfriend...?"

Mike laughs. "No. There's nobody."

There is somebody, Harvey can see that, but it's somebody Mike desperately doesn't want him to call. Mike tugs up his sleeve a little, absently, and Harvey can see the unmistakable shape of the bruise around his wrist. Just the crescent of thumb and forefinger, but if Mike rolled it up further he knows he'd see the other three fingers, printed like a brand on his bony arm.

Mike finishes his chili, unaware of Harvey studying the purple-green bruise (about, oh, two days old?) and scrapes the bowl for the last morsels of sauce. Wordlessly, Harvey offers his own uneaten bowl of food.

"No, thank you," Mike says. "That's yours."

"I ate dinner already," Harvey replies, because the bruise is souring any hunger he might have felt. He offers the bowl again, and Mike takes it, eating slower now but still steadily, washing the chili down with cocoa.

"It's good," Mike says, indicating the cocoa.

"Thanks," Harvey says. He gathers up Mike's empty bowl and puts it in the sink with the pans, running water into them. As he's turning back, the radiator clanks, and Mike startles.

Harvey leaves him to finish the food, going about his nightly routine -- checking the locks, setting out his clothing for tomorrow in the bedroom, sorting through his homework and books and making everything tidy. He can feel Mike's eyes on him, sometimes, but he ignores it until Mike stands and, carefully following Harvey's example, puts the bowl into one of the pots in the sink, already filled with water. Then he returns to the sofa and sits quietly again, still and oddly obedient-looking. Harvey sets his books down and returns, this time sitting on the opposite end of the sofa from Mike.

"So," he says. "Here's the problem."

Mike looks wary.

"I can't send you back out into that," Harvey jerks his head at the window, where snow is falling harder now. "But you're a kid, and keeping you here could get me into some pretty deep trouble if anyone _is_ looking for you."

Mike just watches him.

"So I'm going to find you a jacket and some decent shoes, and call the po -- "

He doesn't even get the word _police_ out before Mike is standing, hurrying to where his shoes sit by the door.

"No, that's cool," Mike says, shoes squelching as he pulls them on.

"Hey, kid -- "

"You don't have to call the cops, I don't want to get you in trouble," Mike says, stammering and stuttering, his hands shaking as he tries to lace up his shoes. Harvey stays where he is.

"Mike, calm down."

"No, I'm fine, I'll just go -- I mean I can walk to the train, get it back into Boston, there's a shelter that'll be serving breakfast soon," Mike says, and one of the laces snaps on his shoes. "Fuck!"

"Okay, I won't call the cops," Harvey says. "Just stop putting your shoes on."

Mike is still struggling, but Harvey thinks he probably has about five minutes before Mike can actually get the damn things on his feet.

"Are you in trouble?" Harvey asks. "With the cops?"

"No!"

"Because if you are, I know a lawyer -- "

"I'm not -- " Mike is struggling to knot the one shoe he's managed to get on. He crouches to get closer, one knee on the ground, but the lace is too short now to tie.

"It's not like people think it is," Harvey says carefully. "I interned with a social services advocacy group last summer. CPS isn't like on TV, most kids get a good home -- "

"If they make it to CPS," Mike says, pulling the lace out to try and get enough length to tie it.

"Why wouldn't you make it into the system?" Harvey asks quietly.

Mike bows his head, gives up on tying the shoelace, and just shakes for a while. He's not sobbing, but Harvey can see the tears rolling down his face. He had, for a little while, forgotten that he wasn't speaking to an adult, but to a scared teenager who apparently doesn't have a single friend in the world.

He stands up, and Mike is standing in a heartbeat. Harvey holds up his hands.

"Not gonna touch you," he says.

"My dad's a cop," Mike blurts.

Harvey, two years ago, would have looked involuntarily at the wrist, now covered in sleeve, where the bruise is. Instead, he keeps his eyes on Mike's.

"He isn't so nice to me," Mike adds, looking down.

"Okay, I'm not calling the cops," Harvey says. He glances at the cordless phone sitting on the kitchen counter. Mike follows his gaze. "Go ahead. That's the only phone. Take it."

Mike slowly slides his foot out of the wet shoe, keeping his eyes on Harvey as he crosses to the phone and takes it out of its cradle, holding it against his chest.

"Now, let's sit down, okay?"

Mike nods. He returns to the sofa slowly, and Harvey sits on the chair again.

"Where's your mom?" Harvey asks.

"Dead," Mike says, into his lap, like he's talking to the phone.

"And your dad's a New York cop?"

"They're all fucking buddies, you know," Mike says bitterly. "They run my name, they'll know who my dad is. What he is, anyway. They'd send me back. Probably in handcuffs."

"And you'd get the shit kicked out of you," Harvey surmises. Mike sniffles, wiping his nose carefully not on his sleeve (the sleeve of Harvey's shirt) but on his wrist. "That's why you had to get out of New York."

"My buddy Trevor got arrested for dealing," Mike said. "Somehow that meant _I_ got my ass beat."

Harvey sees, in a crystallising instant, Mike's whole simple teenaged life: a best friend who can't be trusted and a dad who beats him.

He runs a hand over his face, feeling suddenly tired and way too young for this.

"Okay, it's late," he says. "Obviously neither of us are making good decisions. Here's the deal. I don't call the cops, you sleep on my sofa tonight."

Mike frowns at him. "What's in it for you?"

"No headline tomorrow reading _Teen runaway found frozen to death_ ," Harvey replies. "I have exams coming up, I don't need the guilt."

Mike narrows his eyes. "I keep the phone."

"I keep your shoes."

He can see Mike considering the counteroffer. Finally, he nods jerkily. Harvey gets up and walks to the bedroom, pulling his spare blanket down from a shelf. He offers it to Mike, who takes it and unfolds it, curling up under it but still watching him closely. Harvey picks up the shoes, waggles them -- Mike waggles the phone back, almost smiling -- and then Harvey goes to his bedroom, shuts the door, and tosses the shoes in a wastebasket. Then he lies down and, to his surprise, sleeps remarkably well.


	2. Chapter 2

Harvey wakes up early, out of habit. Harvard Law students don't get weekends, at least this one doesn't. Cambridge is blanketed in white, he can see that through his bedroom window, and there's a teenager sleeping on his sofa.

Also, the dishes have been washed. Mike must have done that last night, before sleeping. He doesn't like the idea that Mike's manners might have been beaten into him, but he can't deny that Mike makes a good houseguest.

Harvey is an orderly soul, and so he has a list. The first thing, whatever else they decide, is to find Mike some clean, decent clothing, a coat, and a pair of boots. He has an old pair with ripped lining that he held onto because that's what he does, and they'll do until Mike can get something better.

He inspects the clothing Mike apparently washed while he was in the shower, the shirt and jeans which are now hanging on the shower bar to dry. They're decent, but he can't wear them every day. Harvey goes to his closet and begins pulling clothing out: a few pairs of jeans he's grown out of, some t-shirts he won't miss, two hoodies from his earlier, less preppy days, and his high school baseball letterman jacket. It doesn't fit his shoulders anymore anyway, and it's warm and thick.

In the cold light of day, Harvey doesn't see many options. He desperately wants to call Jessica and ask her what the fuck he should do, but Mike has the phone still clutched in one hand, and he knows what she'll say.

 _Call the cops anyway, tell them what he told you, and let them sort it out._

 _But his dad's a cop._

 _What are you gonna do, give him a fifty and tell him good luck?_

 _Jessica, he's just a kid._

 _If he's grownup enough to run, he's grownup enough to look after his own affairs. You have classes and exams. Stop being a jerkoff, ditch the anchor, and put number one first._

 _I made him a deal._

 _Tell him you lied. What do you care if he gets angry? You'll never see him again._

Jessica is rigorously ethical when it comes to legal matters. When it comes to fifteen year olds, he doesn't imagine she's overly concerned. He's always been an exception rather than the rule.

He has other resources, contacts he still keeps in touch with from the Social Services office where Jessica inexplicably sent him to intern last summer. He could call Derek or Sharon or Carmina and they'd make sure Mike got through the system. He knows most foster parents are decent people. But he knows also how overworked CPS is, and he knows they don't always win when it's kid versus abusive parent, as hard as they try.

He could give Mike fifty bucks and tell him good luck, but frankly he hasn't got fifty bucks to spare and "good luck" in Boston in the winter...

It's a Saturday. He shouldn't be forced to face moral and existential crises on a Saturday.

"Wow," Mike says, and Harvey, lost in thought, looks up from his contemplation of his closet. "It looks like a tornado hit your closet."

Harvey points to one of the piles on the floor. "That's yours. Fold them and put them somewhere."

"I want my shoes back," Mike says. Harvey solemnly hands him a pair of boots. Mike looks at him.

"Did the shoe fairy come in the night and transmogrify them?" he asks.

Apparently "morning" Runaway Mike is a smartass. Harvey awards him mental points both for sass and for a Calvin & Hobbes reference.

"I'm not walking around campus with someone in pathetic sneakers," Harvey tells him. His mouth seems to be making his decisions rather than his brain, this morning. "We're going to the law library."

Mike fingers the thick leather on the boots. "Why?"

"I have to study, and it's safer for both of us if you're not here alone. I'm taking a shower," he adds, and leaves Mike holding a pair of jeans about a size too big, studying them.

When he emerges, Mike is dressed -- drowning in one of the hoodies, the jeans cuffed twice and held up with one of Harvey's belts, the boots laced tightly around the ankle. Harvey offers him the jacket, and Mike studies it before putting it on.

"Football?" he asks.

"Baseball," Harvey replies. Before he can think about it, he's tugging a watch cap onto Mike's head; Mike flinches but doesn't pull away. It's something Harvey used to do for his brother when they were kids, and he did it without thinking, but he's pleased nonetheless at the little impromptu trial of trust.

They eat granola bars and drink coffee on the walk to the library, Harvey with his bag slung over his shoulder, Mike looking around him in awe at the campus. Covered in snow not yet disturbed by many footprints, it looks austere and ancient. Harvey, for all his disdain of most of his classmates and some of his professors, feels the familiar heart-pang of love for his beautiful school.

Verna is on the desk in the library, which is lucky. Harvey made a point of cozying up to Verna, to all the librarians, because he knows how dickish students can be and how much librarians like it when someone shows them due respect. But Verna especially likes Harvey.

"Verna!" he says, leaning on her counter and giving her a flirtatious smile. "How's your Saturday?"

"Cold and wet," she replies, but she's smiling. "Don't you take a day off, Harvey?"

"But then I wouldn't get to see you," he replies.

"You're going to make a lot of women very miserable some day," she observes.

"But not today. Verna, this is my little brother Mike," Harvey adds, gesturing at Mike, who's lurking near the doorway, probably already well-aware that nobody is allowed in the warm, safe, comfortable Harvard libraries without a student ID. "He's going to be staying with me for a while."

"Shipped off to have big brother straighten him out?" Verna surmises.

"Our secret," Harvey murmurs. "Can you let him in?"

She looks uncertain for a moment, but Mike chooses that moment to sniffle pathetically.

"Don't tell anyone," she says, then raises her voice a little. "Come through," she calls to Mike, who hurries past after Harvey.

"What did you say?" Mike asks in a hushed tone as they make their way to Harvey's study desk.

"Told her you were my brother. She thinks you're a delinquent," Harvey replies.

"Technically, I am."

"Then she's not wrong, is she?" Harvey asks, dumping his bag on his desk. He pulls the chair from the opposite desk around for Mike. "Sit."

Mike sits obediently. Harvey wonders if he could just leave him there and Mike would sit until they were ready to go. Instead, because he's not a sadist, he pulls an elderly Game Boy out of his bag and hands it over. (They're good for study breaks.)

"Amuse yourself," he tells Mike, who takes the Game Boy with a polite _thank you_ and settles in to try and beat Tetris. Harvey dives into his prep work for Monday, relieved.

He's so engrossed in the case file he's supposed to be analyzing that he doesn't notice when the clicking of the Game Boy's controls stops. He doesn't notice Mike leaving or returning. He doesn't notice what Mike's doing until Scotty arrives.

"Harvey," she says scornfully, laying her bag on the study desk across the aisle from his.

"Scotty," he replies without looking up. "Visiting your boyfriend?"

"You wish."

"Oh, I was referring to the library," Harvey answers.

"I feel burned," Scotty drawls. "That was pathetic, Harvey."

"Not my fault the library's the best you can do," Harvey answers. There's a snigger from Mike, which draws Scotty's attention.

"I see you brought _your_ boyfriend along," she says, mock-sweetly.

"And implying that I'm gay and should be ashamed of it is very mature of you," Harvey answers. "He's my brother, jackass."

"Got a comic book in there, sweetie?" Scotty asks Mike, and Harvey turns a little to see that Mike appears to have traded the Game Boy for a law book.

"No," Mike says. "I'm reading about Goss v. Lopez." He looks at Harvey. "I dunno, though."

"Law is a little advanced for the teeny-bopper crowd," Scotty says condescendingly, but Mike apparently ignores her in favor of giving Harvey an earnestly curious look.

"Does the fact that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Lopez despite the school district's assertion that there's no constitutional right to an education mean that there actually is?" Mike asks. "Or would that have to be handled as a separate issue? Because you're required to attend school until the age of sixteen, but a compulsory law seems to indicate a correlatory constitutional right. Does it? Legally?"

Harvey stares at him.

"And if not, where do I go to get _that_ changed?" Mike asks rhetorically, bowing his head to the book again.

"You're on your own for that one, big brother," Scotty announces, and turns back to her study desk.

"I think your correlation question depends on the precision of your vocabulary," Harvey says slowly. "You need to discern state or federal in the case of both "legal compulsion" and "constitutional"."

"Oh." Mike looks thoughtful.

"Also, you're in a law library. If you have a question..." Harvey gestures around himself.

He watches as Mike carefully bookmarks a page, then gets up and wanders off into the stacks.

There are two thoughts warring in his head. One is that Mike is, in fact, a high school student and Harvey is contributing to his truancy. Technically he hasn't yet, but he will if Mike's ass isn't in a school desk on Monday. Moreover, a kid that apparently bright should probably not be a high school dropout if it can be avoided.

The other thought is an insidious, lawyerly thought: he needs to find out if Massachusetts state law says students must be enrolled in an actual high school for it to count.

Harvey has the beginnings of what he might even call _a plan._

He discovers a major advantage to having Mike around when he buys them lunch at a little cafe near the library, and they run into a couple of Harvey's cohort, looking hungover from the night before. They, of course, start to ask if Harvey scored last night, and Harvey makes a chopping motion and tilts his head at Mike, who is on his second bowl of soup.

"Who's the kid?" Jim asks.

"My brother, Mike," Harvey replies, the lie now tripping smoothly off his tongue.

"Ohhh," Alice looks intrigued. "Are you visiting for the weekend?" she asks Mike. Mike looks at Harvey blankly.

"He's staying with me for a while," Harvey replies. He ignores the pink in Mike cheeks, or rather assumes it's from the heat of the soup.

"So no bar tonight?" Tommy asks, looking disappointed.

"Not for me, guys, sorry," Harvey says, and they move on.

"You could go," Mike offers. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Partying with those losers? Please," Harvey replies. Mike is now his ironclad excuse to get out of anything he doesn't want to do, and this pleases him immensely. On the other hand, they haven't discussed this whole "my brother is staying with me for a while" lie. So he takes a sip of soda and considers matters.

"I'm strangely reluctant to send you off to fend for yourself, since obviously you suck at it," he says. Mike listens, but he keeps eating as if there's a time limit on his soup. "And you're earning me millions of bonus points everywhere by being tiny and pathetic and my responsibility."

"I'm not tiny," Mike protests.

"Whatever. Plus you're marginally interesting. So let's make a new deal," Harvey says. Mike sets his spoon down. "You do what I say, you come to classes with me, you keep out of trouble and under the radar. In return, I offer you rent-free shelter, free meals, decent clothing, and the chance to bask in the greatness that is me."

"Don't undersell yourself," Mike replies.

"Three sub-conditions," Harvey continues imperturbably. "One, you have to study for your GED. I'm not going to subsidize a high school dropout. Two, you play along with the little-brother gig. Three, you stay here, with me, and you don't run off again."

"Codicil to subclause three," Mike says.

"Codicil only applies to wills," Harvey replies. "You're thinking of an amendment."

Mike gives him a look that says he is tucking this knowledge away, and will never forget it. It's heady and creepy at the same time.

"You don't give me a reason to run off," Mike says finally.

Harvey looks at him levelly. "I don't hit people."

"Then the amendment won't be a problem, will it?"

Oh, this kid is good.

"Amendment accepted. I'm breaking the law for you so don't mess this up, okay?"

Mike nods. "Can I ask a question?"

"Yeah, go ahead."

"What's our last name?"

Harvey, to his surprise and the surprise of those around them, bursts out laughing.

"Specter," he says. "Harvey and Michael Specter. I'll prepare a brief for you on where you grew up and went to school."

"Awesome." Mike, apparently undisturbed by having made a deal with someone who for all he knows is the devil, goes back to eating his soup.


	3. Chapter 3

It is 1998, and a lot harder to find a runaway child with the internet still in its infancy.

Still, Harvey has concerns. So he informs Mike that he is now seventeen, which should throw anyone suspicious off the scent a little, and they get Mike a haircut. With his hair buzzed short, sticking up in little tufts, he looks different enough that if someday his face goes up on America's Most Wanted, people might not immediately connect Michael Specter and Mike Whatever His Last Name Really Is.

Saturday night, Harvey digs out a pair of khakis and a nice sweater for Mike, laying out his suit as usual.

"Are we going somewhere?" Mike asks, perplexed.

"Church," Harvey says.

"Aw, man, I knew it," Mike groans. "You're some kind of religious nut."

"No," Harvey says, comparing his three ties and trying to remember which one he wore least recently. "I don't believe in God. Or much of what the Catholic church teaches."

Mike squints at him. "Then why are we going to church?"

Harvey shoots him a grin. "It's the one lecture a week where I don't have to take notes."

The truth is, Harvey _doesn't_ believe in God or most religious teachings, and he's pretty sure there's no afterlife (and if there is he definitely doesn't want to be a part of most people's mental image of it). But he likes church, likes the candles and singing and the ritual of Mass. It makes him think of his roots. At Harvard, far from New York, roots seem especially important.

Besides, it looks good if he ever wants to run for office.

So on Sunday morning, after an evening spent watching cable he steals from the neighbors, they eat a quick breakfast, put on their Sunday Best (which in Mike's case is perhaps overstating things) and go to St. Paul's.

Mike is clearly uncertain of procedure, half a step behind Harvey throughout Mass, but he's less sullen about church than Harvey was at his age, and he sings the hymns with a particularly pleasant voice, like Nonexistent God picked him to do it personally.

And afterward there's cookies and coffee, which is always nice.

Walking home through the snow, full of cookies, Mike seems almost content, off his usual edge.

"That wasn't so bad," he says.

"Helps when nobody's expecting you to actually believe it, huh?" Harvey asks.

"Maybe I do believe in God, you don't know."

"Kid, if you believe in God, then you're a walking miracle."

Mike laughs, kicking at the snow, catching the unspoken, unnecessary addition: _If you believe in God after the life you've had..._

"Okay," he admits. "But I'm not willing to argue for the atheists yet, either. Will we go every Sunday?"

"Every Sunday we can. Not during exams, probably."

"Any other surprises I should know about? Weekly yoga class, garage band rehearsal...?"

"I'll let you know, smartass," Harvey replies. "Do you do...stuff like that? You play in band or anything at your school?"

"Nah. No extracurriculars," Mike says, suddenly moody. Harvey backs off, because this is obviously a sore spot.

"There's an undergrad pick-up snow baseball game on Tuesday nights," he says. Sometimes he goes and plays, because there's no law student pickup game and he misses baseball fiercely. "You can come if you want."

He knows next to nothing about Mike, not even his real last name, but Mike's brilliant smile is really all he needs to know, for now.

He has plans. He has every intention of finding out what Mike ran from and exacting punishment. But finding out will take time, and Jessica always said Harvey needed to learn patience.

 

On Monday, they do a grand tour of Harvey's professors, first the ones he actually has class with and then the ones holding office hours. He goes through the same dog and pony show with each: This is Mike, my little brother. Allow me to intimate that he's been sent here to learn some tough love. Is it okay if he comes to class with me? Look at how well behaved he is.

All but one of his professors see Mike, with his sharp cheekbones and perfect posture and calm, quiet manner, and tell Harvey his kid brother can sit in but he better keep his lip buttoned. His Policy professor will not be swayed, but Policy is only once a week and Harvey figures Mike can look after himself for three hours on Tuesdays.

He gives Mike a notebook and tells him to pay attention. Mike takes no notes, but Harvey chooses not to address that until they're eating dinner.

"You didn't do what I asked today," he observes. Mike looks up at him sharply. "I asked you to pay attention in class."

"I did!" Mike protests.

"You didn't take notes."

Mike looks defiant. "I didn't have to."

"Were you incapable of following along? Because you don't seem like a dumbass, and yet..."

Mike leans back, fixing him with a steady look. "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA was passed in October and criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself. We spent most of class on the limit of liability to online service providers whose users infringe on copyright. DMCA amends Title 17 of the United States Code. I don't actually know what Title 17 is or does, but I figure I can look it up next time we're in the library," Mike adds.

"How did you do that?" Harvey demands.

"I have a good memory," Mike says. "And it's interesting. More interesting than the crap we got spoon-fed in high school history, anyway. I read this book when I was nine about our educational system? I haven't put a whole lot of stock in school since then."

"When you were nine."

"I like to read," Mike says.

Harvey can't think of a response for that which doesn't make him seem either stupid or uncool. Instead, he says, "Title 17 is a part of of the United States Code, which outlines federal law. Title 17 in specific concerns copyright law including ownership, transfer, notice, registration, and duration of copyright, among other things." Then, inspired, he adds, "I'll expect a report on it from you on Friday."

Mike nods. "Okay."

Harvey, once again, desperately wishes he could call Jessica, because he suspects he has unwittingly got in way, way over his head. This time he has no earthly idea how the conversation would go, but he's pretty sure telling her he adopted a teenaged genius on the run from his abusive dad is probably a bad idea.

On Friday, Mike hands him a ten-page essay on Title 17, including reasoned consideration of its efficacy as a federal law. It's not Harvard material; he's only fifteen, after all. But it is clear, concise, and -- though immature -- obviously took a lot of thought and work to compose.

Harvey gives him a B+ and allows Mike to argue him into an A- just to see what the kid will try next.

 

It's easy to fall into a pattern with Mike, perhaps because he's so self-sufficient. He doesn't require much in the way of looking-after; he does his own laundry, does the dishes if they happen to be left in the sink overnight, keeps his little pile of clothing next to the sofa tidy. He follows Harvey everywhere like a shadow, but he entertains himself in the library and in class he pays close attention, even if he doesn't take notes.

It takes less than a week for Harvey to settle into this new existence. It takes only a little more than a week for the librarians to get to know Mike (so that Harvey doesn't have to sweet talk him past them anymore) and for Harvey's cohort to accept that a teenager is now a fixed part of their existence. Mike drifts through the crowd of 2Ls amiably, a lanky mascot in a letterman jacket. They don't have much energy to care, too busy cramming for exams and registering for spring courses.

Exam time is where Harvey most visibly appears to be a slacker, because he's been working his ass off while everyone else has been slacking and so he doesn't do the desperate, all-day-all-night cramming the others do. He breezes out of the library at eight every night, Mike on his heels, the others staring either resentfully (if they assume he doesn't need to study) or smugly (if they assume he's going to fail).

Still, the closer exams get, the more evenings he spends studying at home, while Mike watches television or reads or does the homework assignments Harvey gives him to keep him busy. One of them is "learn to cook an edible meal" which has so far earned Mike one solid C for effort, one D for setting a wooden spoon on fire (seriously?) and one B- for making muffins from a mix.

Harvey doesn't like to think too much about the spoon incident. He smelled the smoke, saw the spoon burning, yelled _Mike!_ and stood up from his chair, beating the fire out with a dishtowel and switching off the stove.

He'd seen Mike start backwards when he stood, but he assumed the kid was just getting out of his way. Once the fire was out and Harvey had dumped the fragments of spoon into the sink, running water over them, he'd turned to see Mike pale and shaking.

"I'm sorry, I didn't think -- " Mike stammered, real fear in his voice. "I'll get you another one, I saw some the other day, I'll get two, I know you don't have another one -- "

Harvey held up his hands, and Mike flinched.

"Are you okay?" he asked Mike slowly, quietly. "You didn't burn yourself?"

Mike shook his head.

"It's just a spoon, Mike. I don't care about the spoon."

"It was thoughtless -- "

Harvey ducked his head a little, trying to catch Mike's eye. "You're fifteen, kid, it's okay. I'm not expecting Julia Child here."

Mike choked and for a horrifying moment Harvey thought he was going to cry again, but instead he started laughing.

"I'm so not Julia Child," he said, and it wasn't as funny as Mike thought it was, but Harvey gave him a grin anyway. He got a D for setting the spoon on fire, but not an F, because the food tasted fine.

He doesn't like to think about Mike's face, about the desperate placating expression there.

If anything, during exams, Mike ends up being a blessing in disguise. He doesn't come along to the tests, but he does manage to cook three totally edible meals in a row on nights Harvey badly needs hot food, and in the mornings Mike makes the coffee, so that Harvey is conscious enough to walk to campus without falling over on the way.

"So what happens when exams are over?" Mike asks, the night before Harvey's last test. "Do you go home for winter break?"

"No real point," Harvey says. "I might catch the train down to New York for a day or two, crash at a friend's place, but I don't have any family in the city. Last year I stayed here, started prepping for spring classes."

"You don't go anywhere for Christmas?" Mike says, but he seems relieved.

"I kind of like Christmas on my own. No obligations, no parties," Harvey says. "It's quiet." He pauses. "If you wanted to...not to see your family, but if you have friends at school or something..."

"There was a store in Harvard Square that said they needed seasonal help," Mike says, ignoring him. "I thought maybe I'd see if they needed a stock boy. Under the table."

"Don't blow your cover," Harvey replies.

"I think they're cool," Mike says.

"Well, you can list me as a reference, for what good it'll do."


	4. Chapter 4

Exam results bump Harvey from seventh to fifth in his class, which is a nice holiday present. Nicer still is that Mike gets the job, because it means he has a little of his own cash and the self-respect that comes with it. He's very hush-hush about it, won't even tell Harvey which store he's working at, and Harvey can appreciate his discretion.

He won't take his money, though. Mike tries twice, and after that just starts coming home with the occasional bag of groceries.

Cooking for two, Harvey discovers, isn't really that much more expensive than cooking for one, but Mike's still growing and he does eat a lot. Budgeting forward, Harvey can see it becoming a problem sometime in April. Besides, the kid needs clothes that fit and books and stuff and his Christmas present -- a fake ID that Harvey's Boston connection swears will pass any forgery test -- will set Harvey back a little. So he puts in for an increase in his student loans. Not much; a thousand bucks. Negligible, really, especially for where Harvey plans to go after law school.

Mike's face when he sees the fake driver's license with Michael Specter on it and a birthdate two years prior to what it should be is priceless. Harvey enjoys it almost as much as the Lego set Mike impishly gives him (ah -- so the kid's been working at Curious George & Friends).

Neither of them expect the visit they get on the evening of December 26th. Mike because he doesn't know of Jessica's existence, Harvey because Jessica should in no way be aware of his increased student loan.

Mike is engrossed in a report on the first three months of the DMCA (he has a knack for copyright law) and Harvey is reading up on legal injury in tort law when his buzzer rings out, signifiying that someone is on their doorstep. The length of the ring sounds angry even to Harvey.

"I got it," he tells Mike, and leaves the apartment door open as he answers the building's front door.

Jessica is standing in front of it, looking stunning in cashmere and quilted silk.

"Jessica," he says, startled.

"Harvey," she replies, and along with stunning she looks angry. She brushes past him, scuffing snow off her expensive boots, and turns in the doorway of his apartment. "What did you do?"

"What?" he asks, confused and kind of cold in the front hallway.

"Your asked for a thousand dollar increase on your student loans. What did you do?"

Harvey blinks at her. "How the hell did you find out about my loans?"

"Answer me."

"None of your damn business, is your answer," Harvey snaps, because if Jessica hauled her ass all the way here from New York to harass him about his personal financial matters, she's not thinking the best of him.

"Are you using?" she asks, and that's just unfuckingfair.

"I _never used_ ," he snarls, and pushes past her into the apartment.

"Well, what do you expect me to think?"

"That I saw what happened to Lisa and decided coke wasn't a viable life choice?"

Because this is the story Harvey hasn't told Mike about how he came to be where he is: this is the story of Harvey's girlfriend who got high a _lot_ and got him into a legal jam that he had almost talked himself out of when Jessica picked him up as a pro bono. This is the story of how Harvey went to Harvard; a coke-snorting girlfriend, a lawyer who was mildly impressed by him, and a long hard road away from a woman he desperately loved but who didn't love him enough to help him get out of felony possession charges.

That story.

Which Jessica has no right to assume means Harvey needs a thousand dollars to buy coke with, for fuck's sake. (A semester's worth of coke is way more than a thousand dollars, for a start.)

Jessica hasn't noticed Mike yet, but Harvey is perpetually conscious of him, and their raised voices have the kid balled up on the sofa, watching with fear in his eyes.

"Then what the hell are you -- "

Jessica has now noticed Mike.

There is a long, awkward pause.

"Mike," Harvey says. "This is Jessica Pearson, my...scholarship administrator. Jessica, this is Mike, my student loan increase."

Mike uncurls from the sofa slowly, sets the blanket aside and stands up. Never let it be said that Mike lacks the courage to have good manners.

"Nice to meet you," he says.

Jessica looks at Harvey pointedly, waiting for an explanation.

"I'm his brother," Mike offers.

"No you're not," Jessica says. "Harvey's brother is named Charles."

"I should call him," Harvey says thoughtfully, but it's a bluff to gain time. He called Charles on Christmas eve.

"You really want to get smart with me right now?" Jessica asks him.

Harvey will someday soon be a lawyer, and he knows about the nature of contracts; he knows that nothing is implicit. But he also knows that these things can be argued, and an implicit part of his contract with Mike is not just shelter and food and clothing. All of that collectively implies protection, from anything and everything which threatens Mike and, by association, Harvey.

"Mike, I'm going to go for a walk with Jessica," Harvey says, because there's no reason Mike should have to explain himself to her. Jessica wasn't part of their deal. "I'll be back, and I want to see that DMCA report outline finished."

Mike nods, still looking scared, but he'll do the report and that will keep him from fretting too much.

Once they're outside, Jessica goes for the throat.

"Who the hell is that kid?" she asks. "And why the hell is he apparently living with you?"

"Okay, we've had this conversation in my head about ten times already," Harvey says. "So I know what you're going to say. Just let me talk."

Jessica crosses her arms and looks impatient. She's terrifying and glorious when she does that.

"His name's Mike. He's a runaway from New York," he says, not pausing before he continues. "I found him freezing to death on my doorstep about four weeks ago. I was going to call the cops, but his dad's a cop and Mike believes -- and I agree -- that even if CPS got involved he'd still go back to his father."

"And?" Jessica demands.

"And I don't think he deserves to have the shit beaten out of him for running away from someone who was already beating the shit out of him."

"Harvey, the system -- "

"The system is going to screw him, Jessica. He's a good kid in a bad situation and I didn't see any reason to send him back to it. He's smart. Ridiculously smart. He's been coming to class with me -- "

" _What?_ "

" -- and he's keeping up! He's doing work any first-year could turn in and expect a passing grade on. Look, I have a cover story," Harvey continues. "Everyone thinks he's my brother."

"I got that part."

"They think he's up here to get straightened out by me. The professors like him. He comes to church with me, he plays snow-baseball with the undergrads. He's not disruptive, he's just..." Harvey sighs. "A little expensive."

"How old is he?"

"Seventeen."

Jessica gives him the same look he gave Mike.

"Sixteen next month," Harvey says, deflating.

"You can't just adopt some street kid -- "

"And I'm telling you, he's not just some street kid. Even if he were, so what? I'm not using scholarship money on him. My grades aren't slipping, and I'm not _doing coke_."

"Are you fucking him?"

Harvey stares at her. "Am I _what?_ "

"You heard me."

"No, I'm -- he's fifteen! Jesus, Jessica, where did this come from? What happened to _I have faith in you, Harvey, you're a smart guy_? I haven't done a single thing to earn your mistrust."

"Except lie to me for four weeks about the juvenile truant living with you."

"I didn't lie to you."

"You didn't tell me."

"Because you'd have said what you're about to say, which is that I should ditch his ass and turn him over to the cops."

"Yeah, you should."

"Well, I'm not going to."

"This isn't about the kid. This is about the fact that if you get caught, you're possibly going to prison for harboring him. And all this..." Jessica waves a hand -- _Harvard, your scholarship, your future_ \-- "...goes away."

"I promised him I wouldn't call the cops," Harvey says. "We made a deal."

"Are you willing to risk your future for that deal?"

"Are you going to pull my scholarship?"

Jessica crosses her arms again. "You think I'd threaten that?"

"I don't know. That's really at the heart of this though, isn't it?" Harvey asks. "Because unless you're going to pull my scholarship or call the cops yourself there's not a damn thing you can do. If you call the cops, I go down. So are you going to pull my scholarship, Jessica?"

She narrows her eyes, and he can see she's thinking hard, but he isn't good enough (yet) to see what she's thinking.

"I want to meet him," she says.

"Not if you're going to throw him to the wolves."

"I want to meet him, and then we'll discuss your scholarship."

Harvey runs a hand through his hair, sighs, and waves back up the street, towards his apartment building. "Fine."

Mike is working when they come in, but he looks up -- smiles when he sees Harvey, stops smiling when he sees Jessica.

"Outline's almost done," he says to Harvey.

"Where's that paper you did on Title 17?" Harvey asks. Mike gets up, still eyeing Jessica, and goes to the shelf in the bookcase he's taken over as "his" -- essays, clothes, a shoebox where he stashes his money, and the crisp new GED study books. He rifles through the pile of graded papers there briefly, offering it at arm's length to Harvey.

"Mike, I'd like you to explain to Jessica what you're outlining for your DMCA paper," Harvey says, leaning against his kitchen counter.

Mike launches into a summary of the paper he's working on, including the cases he's studied and the decisions he's been analyzing. He's working his way up to a thesis that Harvey can see forming, but he isn't quite there yet, so he's mostly talking about research, down to what news sources were covering DMCA disputes and whether they were prejudiced for or against. Jessica slowly uncrosses her arms as she listens.

"Mike's work is coming out of this paper," Harvey says, passing it over. "It's not graduate level, but I only gave him a B on it."

"A Minus," Mike corrects, as Jessica studies it.

"He argued me up," Harvey allows.

"Your father hit you?" Jessica asks, looking up.

Mike flinches, but his voice is even when he answers, "Yes, ma'am."

"And that's why you left New York?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Is there a reason I shouldn't call CPS and have you taken into the custody of Social Services?"

Mike looks at Harvey. "You promised."

"I know, kid," Harvey says.

"Does your father know where you are?" Jessica presses.

"Harvey, you _promised!_ "

"Call his father, and I guarantee neither of us will know where he is five hours from now," Harvey says to Jessica. "I'll make sure of it."

Jessica offers the paper back to Mike. He just gives her a venomous look.

"I'm not calling anyone," she says, setting the paper on the kitchen counter. "I was never here, and you never met me. Harvey, if you go down for this, I'll make sure I take every cent of your wasted scholarship out of your hide. Walk me to my car?"

Harvey follows her out, turning to give Mike a _sit down and stay put_ gesture, trusting he'll be there when he gets back. Outside, he keeps quiet until Jessica speaks.

"He's getting his GED?"

"You saw the test prep books."

"How long do you seriously think you can protect him?"

"At least until summer. I can talk him into applying for emancipation, I'm sure I can."

"You know who his father is?"

"I don't know his last name. All I know he's an NYPD officer."

"How bad was it?"

"I don't know. I know he flinches at sudden noises, and he had some nasty bruises. I know when he screws up he flips out that I'm going to beat him. Whatever his dad did, he didn't break him, but if you send him back, I'm pretty sure he will."

Jessica stops at a car parked halfway down the block, a driver sitting in the front seat.

"Get him started on the emancipation appeal. Get him his GED and for God's sake, try not to get caught," she says. Harvey nods. "Oh, and Harvey? Don't make him do your homework for you."

She gives him a small smile, climbs into the car, and shuts the door before he can reply.

Mike's waiting for him when he returns, visibly hovering somewhere between hiding and running.

"Nobody's been called," Harvey says, closing the door behind him. "She's going to forget you existed. No cops, promise."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because she told me," Harvey replies. "I trust her. Which is a story for another time. Right now, we have to -- "

He doesn't see the hug coming, and it pushes the breath out of him in a rush; Mike's holding so tightly to his ribcage he's worried he'll crack something. Mike is also mumbling into his chest, strings of promises and gratitude, _thank you, thank you, I won't get you in trouble, I won't get caught_.

Harvey isn't an overwhelming fan of hugs, but Mike has never done this before, has rarely even touched him before. Apparently standing up to Jessica has earned him that final ounce of trust.

So he cups Mike's head against his shoulder, lets him talk and shake and cry until he's still in his arms, and then he lets him go.

"Let's get some sleep," he suggests.

"You said there's something we have to do," Mike says, wiping at his face in embarrassment.

"A couple of things, but we're already doing the important ones. It can wait until morning. Sleep," Harvey orders. He guides Mike to the sofa, one hand resting on his arm but not gripping it, and eases him down, setting Mike's study papers aside.

"Is she pissed at you?" Mike asks, and Harvey sits down on the coffee table as Mike pulls the blanket over himself.

"Jessica is a complicated person," he says. "She's angry at me, but she respects that I had the guts to piss her off. For her, respect trumps anger. This is genuinely and completely not about you, so you don't need to worry about it."

"Will you? Worry about it?"

Harvey shakes his head. "No. There's nothing to worry about."

"How much extra am I costing you?" Mike asks.

Harvey considers telling him half a dozen things: that it doesn't matter, that student loans aren't like real loans, that it's Harvey's concern and not his. But Mike is old enough, smart enough, to struggle with this, and he might as well know.

"I took out a thousand extra. It's for clothing for you in the new year, and an extension on our food budget, plus some padding just in case. Part of our deal, remember? You stay here and do your schoolwork, I make sure we're warm and dry and well-fed."

"I'll pay you back."

"Tell you what. My loans don't come due until I'm out of school and working. When I have to pay them back, then we'll talk about you paying me back. Until then, this is the government's way of telling us to stay in school."

Mike nods. "But I will."

"I believe you. Now sleep," Harvey orders again, and Mike closes his eyes. Harvey stands, flicks out the lights, checks the locks, and goes to bed himself.

Before he falls asleep, he has one pure moment of _holy shit, I just called a bluff on Jessica Pearson._

 _I am awesome._


	5. Chapter 5

It is 1999, but only just.

It's the last year of the millennium, the cusp of a new era. People are freaking out about the Y2K bug, and Harvey Specter is a thousand dollars richer.

He knows it's not his money, not really. It's the federal government's, he's just borrowing it for a while. Even if it were his, really it's Mike's. Still, when he checks his bank balance and sees the student loan deposit, he can't help but feel a little excited.

He's pretty sure Mike lied about his birthday being January first, but his birthday is _sometime_ in January, anyway, so they treat the thousand dollars as a birthday gift. They go thrift-store shopping in Cambridge, then take the train into Boston and go to Filene's. Harvey flirts with cashiers and sales assistants and gets them outrageous discounts. They treat themselves to lunch at Elephant  & Castle, surrounded by plastic grocery bags from the thrift store and big paper ones from the department stores. They buy Mike boots that actually fit and with great ceremony deposit the old ones in a charity donation barrel. They buy Mike a cheap suit, and against Harvey's wishes a garishly blinding tie.

"Someday I'm going to be an obscenely wealthy lawyer," Harvey says, on the train back to Cambridge. "I'm going to have all my suits tailored. It's on my list of things to do when I'm rich."

"Yeah?" Mike asks, grinning. "You're gonna be rich, huh?"

"Jessica works for this giant law firm in New York. She's sending me to law school so that her firm can hire me as a lawyer."

"That's a lot of money to spend on you."

"It's the firm's money. She says I have potential. The idea is that they spend the money on me now, and for the rest of my life I earn them even more." Harvey nudges him. "What about you? You must have something you want to do."

Mike shrugs. "It was always...assumed I'd join the force."

"The police?" Harvey looks surprised.

"Yeah."

"Nothing against them, but you'd be wasted there. Do you want to?"

"No," Mike says vehemently. "But I never really thought about anything else. What happens when you graduate?" he asks, turning to Harvey.

"That's a year and a half down the road. Are you worried?"

Mike shrugs, looking more teenaged than perhaps he has since the day Harvey found him huddled in his doorway.

"Well, you can come with me, if you want," Harvey says.

"Back to New York?" Mike's voice rises, anxiously. Harvey gets it -- Cambridge feels distant and safe, but in New York his father could be anywhere, could appear at any time.

"You'll be seventeen then, have your diploma. The way you're going, you could go into prelaw. NYU, maybe."

"What about..." Mike trails off, and Harvey honestly didn't mean to broach this topic on a train full of strangers, but maybe it's best.

"Look, Jessica has a plan for me," he says. "And the way she talked when she left, I think if you get your GED she has a plan for you too. She wants me to start the procedure for getting you emancipated."

"That would mean going back to New York, too, wouldn't it?"

"Yes. We'd have to file the papers there. Your father might contest it. There's a risk involved. But I'd be there with you as your legal counsel. I think it's worth it, to get free of him."

"What if the hearing goes badly?"

"It won't."

Mike looks at him uncertainly.

"Trust me. I'm that good," Harvey says.

Mike is quiet and thoughtful when they get home -- cheerful enough, unpacking all his new clothes and laying them neatly on his shelf, showing off the vintage rugby shirt he found in the thrift store and clomping around in his new boots. But he's obviously mulling things over, too.

Harvey doesn't press. Mike will come around in his own time.

 

Harvey's biggest worry about the new year was that someone would wonder why Mike wasn't in school. Apparently he needn't have worried; everyone seemed to assume either that Mike was already out of high school or that he was doing some kind of alternative schooling thing. Harvey had to do the "This is my brother, can he come with me to class?" act again, but his new professors had heard about Mike and nobody had any objections. Starting fresh in new classes, Mike can do his homework right alongside Harvey's, and going over the work with him is helpful for Harvey, too.

It shouldn't be this easy, but it is. By the end of January, Mike knows more about the ins and outs of Harvard than Harvey does. He hares off on his own sometimes while Harvey's studying, and occasionally on a Saturday he goes into Boston and mooches around doing whatever it is teenagers do when grownups aren't watching.

A light leash is best, Harvey thinks. Mike can take care of himself as long as he has somewhere to come home to, and he suspects it's the kid's first real taste of freedom in his young life. Besides, he's a sixteen-year-old who is essentially studying law at Harvard; he needs breaks.

Harvey still goes out with his cohort, once in a while, but now he doesn't have to pretend he's drinking. Nobody questions the fact that Harvey has to be reasonably sober and home by eleven to make sure Mike hasn't accidentally built a perpetual motion machine or become a Supreme Court Justice in his absence. Women _love_ this whole big-brother thing, he finds, but of course it's not like he can bring any of them home and he actually does have to be home himself at a decent hour, so hookups aren't that frequent.

Some women seem to love the _little_ brother thing too, but whenever it happens Mike just preens under their attention and sticks close to Harvey, which is good for both their egos and keeps Mike from any awkward jail-bait moments.

"No dating until you're thirty," Harvey warns him, after a particularly insistent 1L gives Mike her number.

"Physician, heal thyself," Mike retorts tartly, but then he shrugs and grins. "Don't worry. I'm sixteen, but I'm not dumb."

About an hour later, his mind still on the _I'm sixteen_ part of the equation, Harvey presents them with the most awkward moment of their entire friendship to date.

"Look," he says, as Mike tries for the tenth or eleventh time to successfully execute a Rice A Roni dinner. "If you...I mean, you could date. I'm just saying, if you do -- "

"I had sex ed, you know," Mike cuts him off. "Classroom and schoolyard varieties."

"Yeah, I get that, I just mean..." Harvey shifts uncomfortably. "If you need condoms or anything, will you please ask me?"

"Relax, Harvey," Mike says, and turns to him. "Look, aside from..." he waves their (new) wooden spoon around the apartment, "...all this, my life is kind of a mess. I'm not going to make it any more complicated than it already is. Besides," he adds, with a wicked look, "they give condoms away at the student health center for free."

"How do you know that?"

"Everyone knows that." Mike pauses. "Didn't you know that?"

Which is when the Rice A Roni starts to burn, so Harvey doesn't have to admit that while he knew the health center gave away condoms, he has found the durability of them somewhat lacking.

He decides, lying in bed that night, that he's had the "work hard in school" talk, the "what do you want to do with your life" talk, and the "sex: please don't be a dumbass" talk. If he ever does have kids, he is totally prepared for anything that happens after the age of fourteen.


	6. Chapter 6

Harvey knows that it is pure cruelty on the part of Harvard Law that Moot Court comes one week before their Journal Note submissions are due. He imagines they think it will prepare students for the fast-paced world of real law, where they'll have to juggle multiple cases at once, but he still thinks it's secretly cruelty that motivates the scheduling. Spring semester Moot Court is the finalists from the previous semester, which means only he and Scotty are getting their asses kicked like this -- though on the other hand it means Scotty's suffering just as badly as he is.

Mike, who can't actively take part in Moot Court, still pesters Harvey into letting him prep with him. The 2Ls begin to joke about Harvey's "second chair", but Scotty has not underestimated Mike since the first time they met, and she takes it seriously.

"Look, I'm not going to bitch and moan that it's not fair you have what amounts to a Faux Paralegal for Moot Court," she says, leaning on Harvey's desk. Mike is off in the stacks, finding citations. "But you know this isn't just about fair inside of the trial. The professors are judging us on how well we do."

"What's your point?" Harvey asks, leaning back.

"My point is that if you have prep help, you should have to disclose it," Scotty says.

"You want my teenage brother to actually sit second chair?"

"Why not?"

Harvey rolls his eyes. "Because it makes me look weak and like I can't hack it on my own against you. Forget it, Scotty."

"Then stop making kid brother help you prep. Or are you worried you really can't hack it against me?"

"I'm not making him do anything. He wanted to help prep. If I tell him to stop he's going to sulk."

"Oh, poor baby," she says, unsympathetically. "Ditch the kid or give him second chair, Harvey."

Harvey catches her wrist as she turns to go, totally ruining her exit.

"What if you had prep help too?" he asks. She untangles her wrist from his hand, looking annoyed.

"What are you suggesting?"

"Mike wants to be a part of things. He doesn't care who he's working for, not really. Tell you what -- if he agrees, you can have an hour of his time for every hour I get."

She considers it. "What about conflict of interest?"

"He can handle it. Mike's a big boy."

"Nice to hear," Mike announces, returning with a stack of photocopies. "Do I get a bicycle for being good?"

"Scotty has a proposition for you," Harvey says, and Mike looks back and forth between them. "She thinks it's unfair that I have a Second Chair."

"As I am repeatedly told," Mike sighs, "the practice of law is only about fairness in the abstract."

"She thinks either you should stop helping me, or you should actually sit Second Chair at the trial."

"I'm pretty sure bringing me into the trial is like the worst idea ever," Mike says, with a significant look at Harvey that clearly spells out _best way ever to blow my cover, boss._

"So we think," Harvey continues, "that we should split your services. I'll scale back the time I use you for prep, and half your time will be at Scotty's disposal."

"Okay," Mike says, with way less fight than Harvey expected.

"Just like that?" Scotty asks. She narrows her eyes. "If you spy on me for Harvey, kid, I'll eviscerate you."

"No, I think it'll be interesting," Mike says, calm and amused. "You know, getting to see two legal minds going up against each other and all."

There's something a little dirty about the way he says it, something that makes Harvey suspicious that Mike just played them both.

"And that way, whoever wins, I get to win too," Mike adds brightly. He checks his watch. "Harvey, I've been here an hour twenty. Want me to go help Ms. Scott?"

Harvey waves a hand dismissively, and Mike crosses the aisle to Scotty's desk.

"Scotty," Harvey says, his voice low. She glances at Mike, then leans in a little. "Hurt or upset him and I will make you regret being born. Clear?"

She smiles. "I have two brothers of my own, loser. Don't worry, I'll return him unharmed."

More out of kindness to Mike than any sense of fair play, Harvey generously does not ask him what he's doing for Scotty, or to report on any of her strategies. He's confident that even if Scotty isn't as honorable as he's being, Mike won't tell her anything.

 

Moot Court goes...

It would be a lie to say it goes badly. It goes, actually, magnificently. It's like Harvey always thought law should be, tense courtroom drama and emotional speeches and theatrics galore. They rip the place apart and put it back together and the other students are left in awe.

The Moot Court finals are open-attendance, so they're performing for their colleagues as well as the professors. It's a big crowd. Mike is there too, and Harvey wonders what's going on in that genius mind of his: whether he's only now comparing their techniques and approaches, or whether this is just the culmination of Mike's unique experience serving both prosecution (Harvey) and defense (Scotty).

But in the end, the thing is, Harvey loses.

And he really, really hates to lose.

He knew he was losing when the "jury" took so long deliberating. He knew it was close, but he knew he was losing. So it's not a shock or anything, and he's too good at what he does to betray his disappointment until court adjourns, but it still irritates him.

"It was really close," Mike says, as they walk out of the auditorium they've been using as a courtroom. "I mean it had to be, right?"

"Close doesn't count," Harvey says.

"No, but it's only Moot Court."

"There's no only about it."

"Are you pissed at me?" Mike asks, his voice small and quiet. Harvey stops dead in the hallway, the other students streaming around him.

He supposes it's progress of a sort, that Mike's asking instead of cowering.

"Why...what?" he asks, and Mike edges to the side of the hallway, out of the flow of traffic.

"Are you pissed because I helped Scotty win?" Mike asks.

"I'm pissed at me because I lost," Harvey says. "I'm pissed at Scotty because she won. I'm not pissed at you at all."

"You're sure?"

"I don't do passive-aggressive," Harvey says. Mike looks confused. "If I'm angry at you, I'll tell you, and I'll tell you why."

"Promise?"

Harvey rubs his forehead. This is not the therapy session he wants to be having right now.

"Are you worried I'm angry in a general, free-floating sense, or are you worried I'm going to say I'm not angry now and take it out on you later?"

Mike swallows. "Oh."

"Yeah. This is like the Jessica thing, okay? My problem, not yours. I promise I'm not mad at you, Mike. Nothing I say or do right now is a punishment, do you understand?"

Mike nods, though it looks like it takes a lot of willpower to do so.

"Did you get anything out of it?" Harvey asks, calming himself. "I mean, was this educational for you, the whole thing?"

Mike smiles. "You want me to write a paper on it?"

"Yeah, actually." Harvey checks his watch. "Look, I have to study tonight. We'll get some dinner, I'll go sulk in the library, you can have a peaceful evening. Sound good?"

"Yeah, okay," Mike says, and Harvey steers him out into the flow of traffic again, heading for home.

He makes an effort not to be the sullen asshole he feels like, over dinner, and if Mike is any barometer he more or less succeeds, since Mike doesn't spend the rest of the night freaking out that Harvey hates him or is going to hit him or something. They eat, they talk a little, Harvey does the dishes. Mike settles in with his new assignment while Harvey packs up his bag and walks to the library to put the final edits on the Journal Note he's submitting in, oh, four days.

He gets there at eight. Around ten, Scotty sashays in.

"Hi," she says cheerfully, shedding her coat. Underneath she is wearing something much more low-cut than usual for library study time. It's deep blue-purple, clingy in all the right places, and it gives Harvey a new appreciation for Scotty's legs, when previously mostly he'd been thinking about her brain.

"Nice dress," he says, because he can be gracious about this. He can. Honest.

"Thanks. I was out celebrating my _win_ ," she replies.

"Whatever."

Okay, maybe he can't be gracious.

"Again with that burning wit," she says, and Harvey sets his pen down, leaning back.

"Have you ever noticed whenever I burn you, all you can do is call it a lame burn?" he asks.

"I can't help it if all your burns are as lame as your trial losses."

"You swayed a jury. Big deal," Harvey says.

"Actually, it is."

"Juries are easy to manipulate."

"And yet..." she gestures elegantly, indicating his loss. Harvey stands up, because damned if they're going to have this argument with him looking up at her the whole time.

"You got lucky."

"Your closing argument was stiff," she retorts, turning to face him.

"My closing argument was fine."

"Your entire case was flimsy."

"You distracted the jury."

"Your point?" she asks, stepping up to him, not giving an inch.

"If my case was flimsy you could have _actually addressed the issue_ ," Harvey says.

"I didn't even have to."

"Because you knew that way you'd lose."

"And instead I won, so I guess my way worked, huh?" Scotty says, but there's a false note there, because while they both know Harvey lost, and losing is what matters, they also know Scotty _didn't_ face the case head-on, and here in academia that will still count against her. She won't always be able to sway a jury, and she knows it.

It's not cheating, but it's close.

So, weirdly, are they -- face to face, so close he can feel the tension ratchet up in her body when she says, "So you get a moral victory, Harvey, enjoy that."

"Go to hell," he says, or starts to, but he's not sure how much actually gets out because they're kissing, Scotty's tongue in his mouth tasting of wine, her body pressed up against his. And in another second his arm is around her waist, her hand is sliding up his neck to pin him there, hold him still with his mouth on hers.

Their study desks are far back in the stacks, which Harvey chose because it's quiet here and Scotty chose for whatever reason Scotty does anything. It's Friday night; they are probably the only two losers in the library right now.

Scotty digs her nails into his neck around the time he walks them back into her study desk. After that, well, things get a little inevitable.

 

Scotty is rumpled and flushed and her hair is kind of a mess, but it's a good look on her, Harvey thinks, as he buttons his shirt and wonders where his belt went.

"Going so soon?" she asks, propping herself on her elbows on the study desk. "I should have expected that."

"That'd hurt more if I hadn't just amply proved my stamina to you," Harvey says, zipping up his fly.

"Oh, stamina jokes never get old." She runs a hand through her hair, but she's breathing heavy, so Harvey is counting a personal win alongside his moral victory. He can still taste her. "Seriously, what's the rush, or are you afraid our pillow talk might show you up?"

"It's almost eleven. I have to get home," he says.

"Right. Mike." She pushes herself upright, or at least up to sitting, and adjusts her skirt. "He did good work, you know."

"Of course he did," Harvey answers absently. "He's going to be a hell of a lawyer someday."

"Is that what he wants? To be a lawyer like big brother?"

There's a very slight emphasis on _big_ that pleases Harvey greatly.

"I don't know. Maybe. He's, whatever, he has his whole life ahead of him." Harvey gives up on the quest for his belt and focuses on making sure he has everything he needs to take home with him. He looks up abruptly. "Why are we talking about Mike? Shouldn't we be having some kind of awkward post-coital _I still hate you_ fight?"

"I don't hate you, Harvey. I just love defeating you. Why, do you hate me? Also, do you know where my underwear is?"

"Probably keeping my belt company," he says with a wry look. "No, I don't hate you. I just really want to defeat you back."

"Then we can skip the awkward parts and keep on using each other to inspire ourselves to totally dominate this place. Good talk," she says, and stands up. "Oh, hey, belt."

"Thanks," he says, catching it as she flings it to him. "I'll keep an eye out for your underwear."

"Keep it. My gift to you, loser."

"Whatever."

And they part, Harvey hurrying out of the library and homewards, Scotty presumably staying to either study or gloat quietly over what has to be, for her, a pretty damn good day.

He's not terribly proud of getting home half an hour late and smelling like sex, but he figures Mike will be asleep. He walks in quietly, hoping not to wake him, but there's a pool of light in the living room and Mike's propped on the couch, reading.

"Laaaaaate," Mike calls out.

"Yeah, sorry," Harvey replies, dropping his bag and hanging up his coat. "Nice job not destroying anything."

"Studying go well -- " Mike starts to ask, and then looks up at him. "Studying went _very_ well," he comments.

This is almost as awkward as the condom talk.

"There was a thing." Harvey waves a hand.

"Did you even go to the library?"

"Of course I went to the library."

Mike leans forward. "Was it Verna?" he asks in a stage whisper.

"No, it wasn't Verna. How do you even know this?"

"Scratchmarks on your neck," Mike replies, and goes back to his reading. Harvey puts a hand to his neck. He can feel three slightly raised, slightly sore ridges there. Damn Scotty. She probably did that on purpose.

Harvey pours himself a glass of water and settles on the couch, stretching.

"So are you going to badger me about who it was, or are you genuinely that interested in doing your homework?" he asks.

"I figure it was Scotty," Mike says, then glances up to see if his hit landed. "Hah!"

"Okay, Einstein, how'd you figure it out?"

Mike shrugs. "I read a lot. It's a pretty classic trope, fine line between love and hate, genius and madness. Those usually exist for a reason. It was fun to watch you guys circle each other."

"You're not normal," Harvey informs him.

"Thanks for the update. Are you going to bed?"

"Yeah, I think so. Don't stay up too late, okay?"

"I won't."

Harvey, unpacking his bag in his room, finds Scotty's underwear stuffed in it. He's honestly not sure what to do with it, whether to give it back or keep it as some weird trophy or what. It's pink with little red roses all over it and a lot of lace, and it makes Harvey wonder if Scotty knew exactly what she was doing when she went to the library, or if she was expecting to meet someone somewhere, or if this is just what she wears all the time (great, now he's going to be thinking that the next time he sees her in class).

More and more, Mike makes Harvey feel like he's actually got a handle on being an adult, because there's this sometimes-confident, sometimes-fragile kid looking to him for guidance and protection, someone who seems to think Harvey knows everything. Harvey likes to believe he's pretty good at looking after Mike.

But then he goes to class and he's reminded he's just a student, or he does poorly (for him) on a test, or he has sex with someone in the library and ends up trying to figure out what to do with her panties, and he thinks he has no goddamn clue what the hell he's doing even pretending to be a grown man.

He eventually stuffs them into his laundry basket, because whatever he does they definitely need to be washed and neatly folded before he thinks about it any further. Then he decides to look on this as an experience he can learn from, and if Mike ever comes to him with this problem he will have a wise and learned answer.

Failing that, he can always wrap them up and give them back to her as a graduation present.


	7. Chapter 7

It is 1999, and Harvey is now twenty-four years old.

His birthday is in early April. It's still bitterly cold in Cambridge, and every time Harvey sees the wind sweep the tree branches around on campus he feels smug satisfaction. He tells himself it's because he has a warm apartment to come home to and he's doing well in classes, but a part of him knows that he's thinking about Mike living on the streets in this long winter, and is satisfied that he can provide shelter for him. He is A Provider.

He gets a handful of very nice presents for his birthday from Mike and his brother Charles and a few of the 2Ls he's closest to, and one really horrible one from Jessica.

For his birthday, Jessica gives him Michael Ross, DOB 1/1/83, currently listed in police databases as MISSING - RUNAWAY.

He'd told her, sometime in January, that Mike said his birthday was January first but he doubted it was true. Apparently she took the birthdate and Mike's age and ran with it.

The envelope shows up in his campus mailbox the day after his birthday, while Mike's waiting for him in the library. There's no name on the return address, just the building number and street where the firm has its office space. Harvey opens it, perplexed. Inside there's a typed, unsigned note:

 _It turns out he was telling the truth. This is everything Research could find without sending up any flags. Do what you can with it._

He's touched, in a way, that she put Research on it, that she actually took the time to have someone look into Mike. But he wonders if he'd rather not know.

There's a printout of Mike's police record, which is brief: one arrest, probably in conjunction with his dealer best friend. Charges dropped. As of December 1998, he is marked as a runaway. His father is Officer Eric Ross, his mother is deceased. A photocopy of Mike's mug shot shows defiance and fear, two emotions Harvey is used to from Mike, but more defiance. Good for him.

Behind the police record is a high school record: honor roll, straight-As, lots of AP and honors courses, but multiple detentions for backtalking to teachers and cutting class. There's a note from some guidance counselor who wanted to know why Mike wasn't being accelerated, and a follow-up note that his father refused to give consent. A series of photocopied photographs shows Mike at various ages -- a smiling kindergartener, a preadolescent with his hair slicked down, a studiously posed junior-high student, a few cheerful candids from a yearbook and a sullen formal from what must have been his sophomore year.

He sets all this aside, the paper history of Michael Ross, and begins paging through the thick sheaf behind it. The paperwork is in date order but from all over the place -- half a dozen emergency rooms, a dozen clinics, a handful of doctors, never the same one twice in a row. Mike's father knew how to cover his tracks. There are one or two broken bones; plenty of bruises, some lacerations, a couple of what look like legitimate illnesses. Harvey has no idea how Jessica got Mike's personal medical history, but it looks like someone went to every hospital in New York to assemble the trail. Some of the records have false last names.

Harvey knew that Mike's dad beat him, and he knew that nobody just wakes up one day when their kid is fifteen and decides to knock him around. The physical evidence of Mike's childhood, though...

He flips back to the top of the pile. Mike's address in New York is listed. Presumably that is also Officer Eric Ross's address. Harvey wonders if he has time this weekend to catch a train to New York and murder the man in his sleep.

"Care package from mommy?" Scotty asks, passing him as she heads for her own mailbox.

"Not exactly," Harvey murmurs. Scotty stops and then really looks at him, frowning.

"Bad news?" she asks, more gently.

"I'm not sure yet." He glances up at her. "Hey, can I call a time out on our bullshit sessions for a minute?"

She raises her eyebrows. "Why?"

"You've got brothers, right?"

"One older, one younger."

"If you found out someone had hurt them, and they probably didn't want you to know, would you tell them you knew?"

She considers it. "Look, my family is hugely dysfunctional, so I might not be the best person to ask. But if there's anything I've learned from all the dysfunction, it's that generally it's better to tell the truth as quickly as possible."

Harvey nods. "Thanks."

He starts to pack the folder away, but Scotty lingers. "Listen, so, I actually like Mike and have an interest in what happens to him. Is he in trouble?"

"Not any more so than usual. I might have to kick a little ass, but not his."

"Well, if you need any help," she offers.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend?" Harvey asks drily.

"We're not enemies, Harvey," she says, in a voice that recalls in full technicolor detail the night in the library. "We're competitors. Adversaries, maybe. Let me know, okay?"

"I will," he says, and shoulders his bag, walking quickly towards the library.

Mike is in his usual chair, stolen from the empty study desk across from Harvey's, legs tucked up and a GED prep book propped on his knees.

"I am getting a truly dire view of what Junior Year lit class would have entailed if I'd stuck around for it," Mike says without looking up. "I read The Great Gatsby when I was twelve."

"Did you understand any of it?"

"Some. I think you should either read it before high school or when you're in college. Do you think most sixteen-year-olds really get the whole idea of reinvention? I mean, we've barely invented ourselves to start with," Mike says, turning a page. Harvey rubs his face. He reaches out and gently takes the study book away from Mike, who lets his legs drop and looks at Harvey curiously.

"We need to talk about something," Harvey says, taking the folder out of his bag. "When you told me your birthday was January first, I assumed it was a lie, but I mentioned it to Jessica. Her firm has a strong research department, and they tracked you down."

Mike tenses.

"Nothing's going to happen. She sent me the information they compiled as a courtesy. She's not going to tell your father where you are."

"But you know where he is," Mike says, his voice rising.

"I know who he is, and where he lives, but that's irrelevant to us right now. I just need you to know that I know." Harvey offers him the folder. "If I knew what was in it, I wouldn't have read it, but it's too late now to take back."

Mike accepts the folder and looks through it, dully, like he's being dragged back into a past he doesn't want, and doesn't want to remember.

"How'd she find this?" he asks, voice thin and anxious, when he reaches the hospital records. "This is private! She had no right -- "

"I know that," Harvey says.

"Did you _read this?_ "

"Michael." Harvey carefully doesn't touch him, because Mike reacts badly to touch when he's nervous. "This wasn't anything I didn't already know in the abstract."

Mike's face is a mixture of shame and anger. Mike did reinvent himself, or Harvey reinvented him, or some combination of the two: Mike Specter is the smiling, well-behaved, likeable little brother of Harvey. Mike Ross is the back-talking, class-cutting kid who couldn't protect himself, whose own father didn't love him enough to stop himself from hurting him. Not enough to give Mike the future he was owed. And it's plain to see that Mike thinks Harvey wouldn't like Michael Ross, would think he was an ineffectual weakling.

Harvey could tell him this changes nothing, or he could say he's not going to look at Mike any differently, but those are both variations on protesting too much: if you have to say it, that means it's not entirely true.

"I knew what had happened to you less than an hour after we met," he says instead. "I saw the bruise on your wrist. I gave you all this because you didn't have it. What do you think is going to change?"

"I'm not weak," Mike mumbles. "And I'm not a child."

"Did he say you were?"

Mike nods, then shifts. The letterman jacket is hanging over the back of the chair; he pulls it up over his shoulders, the file falling to the floor, and tucks his arms into the sleeves. He huddles down in it like it's his only shield against the world.

"And do we respect his opinion?" Harvey presses.

"No," Mike says, but he pulls the jacket closer around him.

Mike's face has filled out a little since they've met -- partly from good regular meals, partly from his jaw squaring and losing its childish curve. His ribs don't show against his skin, not like they used to anyway. He's grown an inch or two, and he'll need new shoes again soon. Sudden noises don't make him startle anymore, or casual touches.

And to his surprise Harvey knows how to deal with this now. He's not at sea the way he was the night Mike would have chosen to risk freezing to death before going back to his father. He has grown up too.

Besides, Jessica has always said Harvey's strength will be in his ability to close a deal, his knack for making people think what he's giving them is what they've wanted all along. In Mike's case it just happens to be true.

He reaches slowly into the pocket of the jacket, slow enough that Mike doesn't pull away, and takes out the wallet they bought him at the thrift store. He flips through it -- a temporary library pass Verna gave him, a two-for-one coffee coupon for Dunkin Donuts, a photo Tommy snapped of him and Harvey on one of the rare occasions Harvey let him tag along to a party -- and pulls out the driver's license with the name Michael Specter on it. He holds it up.

"This is who you are now," he says. "Everyone who matters or who ever will matter knows this," he taps a finger on the card, "and nobody who ever matters will believe that you are anything less than him. For as long as you want, this is you."

"But it's not real," Mike says.

"It's real enough. You live it every day, and I don't think that's a lie, is it?"

Mike shakes his head. Harvey offers him the ID, the same way he offered him his food the first night they met, and Mike takes it and holds out his other hand for his wallet, tucking it back inside, putting it in his pocket.

"Do you have to study, or can we go home?" he asks.

"Studying can wait a night. Come on," Harvey replies, and bends to pick up the folder, shuffling the papers into it, packing it away.

"What are you going to do, now that you have it?" Mike asks, as they walk through the stacks, past the more crowded study areas. Alice looks up and waves; Tommy throws Mike a hang-ten sign.

Harvey hasn't brought up the topic of emancipation again, because he knows it won't sell unless Mike wants it, unless he's a hundred percent on board with it. The paperwork will help that, but right now is not the time to tell Mike that he wants Mike to be an independent teen without any guardian.

"Nothing, for now. You want to keep it?"

"No. You keep it. Not in the living room," Mike adds.

Harvey rests his hand on Mike's shoulder, then settles his arm around him, and they keep walking -- out of the library, into the cold, the last of the permafrost grubby and brown along the sides of the pedestrian footpaths. Out of the campus, into Cambridge, and up the little hill to their apartment. The days are getting longer, but it's still nearly dark by the time they're home.

There's the usual mess of hanging up coats, taking off hats and boots, trying to maneuver around each other in the narrow entryway, and then Mike beelines for the sofa, where his blankets (somehow they have acquired...more, Harvey isn't sure how or when that happened) and one of the hand-me-down hoodies and his pillow are flung in a sort of careless nest. Harvey sets his bag on the counter and begins unpacking, setting everything right for tomorrow, sifting through his papers, making neat piles of work to do, things to study, bills he needs to pay, mail to sort. By the time he's done disposing of the ad flyers and opening anything that looks official, Mike is sitting on the couch buried in the hoodie -- hood up and everything -- under the blankets, with only his nose and fingers visible, holding a book.

When Mike began to feel like he could mess with Harvey's stuff (and Harvey never quite knows what to think of that, whether to be pleased or dismayed because it's his _stuff_ ) he went straight for Harvey's slightly embarrassing collection of scifi that he keeps on the lowest possible shelf so people don't notice it. In his teens, he found to his dismay that most science fiction took itself very seriously, so his collection is heavy on Asmiov because Asimov manages to make the future seem funny. But there's also a lot of Butler and LeGuin, some L'Engel, a worn copy of Ender's Game, carefully chosen books by Bradbury and Clarke.

His copy of _Rendesvous With Rama_ was a lot less worn before Mike got his hands on it, and that's what Mike's reading now.

"Haven't you read that book before?" Harvey asks, pouring a can of baked beans into a pot. He takes some cheese out of the fridge.

"Yeah," Mike says, from the depths of the hoodie.

Harvey begins slicing the cheese, putting his one frying pan on the second burner and turning on the heat to both.

"And do you not have a photographic memory?" Harvey prompts. They don't talk about it a lot, but Mike doesn't just have a _good_ memory, and they've both acknowledged that, if silently.

"Yup," Mike says. Harvey butters bread, stirs a little brown sugar into the beans.

"So you wouldn't actually need the book in front of you?"

"I like it," Mike replies, as Harvey waits for the pan to warm up, testing it by flicking drops of water onto the surface. "It's different, just remembering from having it in front of you."

Harvey rolls this around in his mind as he makes the grilled-cheese sandwiches, because he suspects it's profound.

"Do you like it?" Mike asks, as the butter sizzles.

"I don't own books I don't like," Harvey replies. "I like the political parts."

"I'm so surprised," Mike says, with a little of his usual humor. "I like the part when Pak crashes the skybike."

"Why?"

There's a silence long enough for Harvey to finish cooking the sandwiches, for the beans to begin to bubble. As he's bringing two plates to the sofa, Mike says, "Because everyone knew there was no hope, but when the worst actually happened someone saved him anyway. Also there's a robot," he adds lightly.

Harvey tugs the hood off his head, sitting down next to him. Mike leans into his arm as he eats.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning: While writing this I looked up what events happened in 1999, and I noticed that the Columbine school shooting happened in April. I had the idea to incorporate Mike and Harvey's reactions to it, so this chapter is about that day.
> 
> The good news is that if you skip this chapter, it's standalone and won't affect the rest of the story, so you won't lose anything.

Two weeks later it is April twentieth, 1999, and Harvey finds himself suddenly set apart from his classmates, suddenly drawn into a circle of professors, because around one-thirty in the afternoon anyone with a teenage child in America is desperate to know that they are safe.

The students watch on monitors in empty classrooms, in offices and any bar or restaurant with a television. In Colorado, two time zones and two thousand miles away -- in Columbine, at the high school --

The news comes in the middle of Policy II class, the one class Mike is forbidden to attend, and when they manage to get the television tuned in, about five minutes after what's happening becomes as clear as it's going to that day, Harvey realizes he has to know where Mike is _right now_.

It's irrational; it's not like someone declared national war on the country's teenagers. It's one isolated incident happening thousands of miles away. Mike's not even in high school. But he has to find Mike.

"Professor," he says. "I need to leave."

Professor Lewis looks at him. "Oh God, of course. Michael -- Jesus, I need to get Cindy -- "

His daughter, Harvey thinks vaguely. She's two years younger than Mike, in her freshman year of high school at Boston Latin.

"Do you know where he is?" Lewis asks, as they walk down eerily silent hallways.

"He should be in the library, unless he decided to go down to the Square," Harvey answers. "He knows to go home if there's an emergency but if he's out walking around he might not have heard. This is insane," he adds, randomly. "He's not in any danger."

"Welcome to parenthood," Lewis replies.

"Jerome!" Professor Bennet calls -- Harvey had her for Criminal Law last year. "Are you going to get Cindy? Can you drive me? Brad's there and nobody's answering at the school."

"The lines are probably jammed. Come on. Harvey, can I drop you at the library?"

"No, it'll be faster from here if I walk."

"Is that where Mike is? He's probably safe there, right?" Bennet asks. Harvey didn't know Bennet even knew about Mike.

They pass other professors; some on hall or office phones, calling their kids, some heading to the parking lot to go get them. He is surrounded by people twenty years older than him, by his professors, and as he steps outside and breaks away to head for the law library he feels like an alien, seeing his classmates through the windows.

He keeps repeating to himself how ridiculous this is, how ludicrous his professors' behaviour is, how absurd his own actions are. This is the kind of panic that jams highways during natural disasters.

On the other hand, it's not like he's missing class.

The attendant at the library doesn't remember seeing Mike, and his jacket isn't on the chair at their study desk. He's not having lunch at the nearby cafe, and when Harvey calls the home line from a payphone, nobody answers.

Mike sometimes likes to go down to the Garage, a big warren of hip shops just off the Square, and hang out in the music store. Harvey's on his way there when he spots a familiar dark-blond head, when he sees the bright blue of his letterman jacket. Mike, emerging from the Harvard Coop.

"Mike!" he calls, and Mike turns, looking surprised. Harvey darts across traffic, pulling Mike into his arms, exhaling for what feels like the first time in half an hour.

"Are you out of your actual mind?" Mike asks, squirming, voice muffled against Harvey's shoulder. "Leggo me, crazy person!"

Harvey lets him go, looks him over, satisfied now that Mike has been located and deemed whole.

"What the hell, Harvey?" Mike asks, with every ounce of teenage-boy-who-hates-public-hugging he possesses.

Harvey has no way of explaining this without making Mike think he's flipped out even more than he already does.

"Class is cancelled," he says. "There was...I...wanted to know where you were, okay?"

Mike peers at him. "Why's class cancelled?"

"Have you seen the news?"

"No, why?"

"There was a shooting in Colorado. There's a bunch of high school kids dead, I just..."

Harvey is not _emotional_. He is rational, neat, and concise. He doesn't panic.

Well, he didn't formerly panic. Apparently he does now.

Mike looks at him -- he's almost as tall as Harvey now, stupid growth spurts -- and takes him by the sleeve. He pulls him down the street, through the Garage to the brewpub on the far side, where the TV quite predictably has the news on, and the few people in the bar at one in the afternoon are all staring at it.

Mike is too young to have been impacted this way by any of the major events of the past twenty years -- Harvey barely recalls most of them himself. It's Mike's first encounter as an adult with something that brings ordinary life to a halt, and he just stands inside the doorway, staring at the television.

Theoretically, Harvey knows this won't be the last time; there have been day-stopping events before and will be again. Assassinations, earthquakes, hurricanes, bombings -- they happen, and they leave everyone dazed. He doesn't know the concrete: that a little over two years from now, in his second week at Pearson Hardman, he'll be able to see smoke from the Twin Towers at eye level. Or that four years from now, on a nice summer day, the lights will go out across the entire eastern seaboard and he'll end up with four associates and three junior partners staying with him for a night because they live too far away to walk home.

Right now what he mostly knows is that Mike is safe, so for him at least the world is turning again.

They sit and drink sodas and watch the news, but after an hour it's pretty obvious there's nothing new to report. Afternoon class is cancelled when they trek back for it; they go home, drifting aimlessly around the apartment, the television by mutual decree banned until the evening news.

Professor Lewis phones him. "Did you find your brother?"

"Yes, sir. He's fine. Cindy?"

"She thinks I'm a nut job, but she regularly thinks that."

"I feel a little stupid," Harvey admits.

"We all do, but what was I gonna do, not go find my kid?" there's a pause, and then, "You can bring him next week if you want. Everyone says he's quiet. Lord knows I wish I could keep Cindy with me. I'm thinking of buying her a flak vest. Jesus H. Christ."

It's surreal to be talking on the phone about these things with a professor who, the week before, had universally struck fear into the hearts of all law students, Harvey included. Not that Harvey would ever _show_ fear, but Lewis is a cruel tyrant in the classroom.

"See you Tuesday, then," Harvey says awkwardly, and they hang up.

Mike is playing Game Boy with his headphones in, one foot tapping in time to video game music only he can hear, and Harvey seriously ponders the whole flak vest idea before coming to his senses.


	9. Chapter 9

In May, they have a Close Call. Capital letters. It deserves it, and if it weren't for Charles' quick thinking, it would be more like a Terminal Encounter, Harvey is pretty sure.

Harvey isn't sure if Mike's phone call to New York started it; he's never asked Jenny if she ratted Mike out, but it happened when Jenny was sixteen and parents can be very intimidating. So the two phone calls that constitute the Close Call are linked in his mind: Mike's call to New York and Charles' call from Chicago to Cambridge.

It starts like this: out of the blue one day, Mike asks if he can call someone long distance. Harvey didn't think he had anyone to call.

"Who?" he asks, curious. Mike looks down at his hands.

"There's this girl," he starts. Harvey raises an eyebrow. "She's just a friend. I was thinking..." he inhales. "You remember I told you my friend got arrested for dealing?"

Harvey nods.

"She's his girlfriend. I just thought...I haven't thought about it in a while, I kind of...I couldn't. But I thought I should find out if he's okay. And maybe she'd...like to hear from me, and I'm sure she wouldn't tell my dad."

Caller ID is not ubiquitous yet, but it's more and more common, and Harvey has made sure his phone is blocked. He picks it up and tosses it to Mike.

"Don't tell her where you are," he cautions. "Do not tell her my name."

"I won't."

He leaves Mike alone to make the call. When he comes back from getting coffee half an hour later, Mike is sitting on the sofa, phone next to him, looking thoughtful.

"How'd it go?" Harvey asks, leaning on the kitchen counter.

"She cried some," Mike says distantly.

"And your friend?"

"Trevor. They put him in juvie for two months but he's out now. School expelled him so he has to bus to a different one. She dumped him, she hasn't heard from him in a couple of weeks." Mike wipes his nose. He doesn't look like he's been crying, but maybe he's just been working really hard not to. "She said she thought I was dead. She says Dad's looking for me. I made her promise not to say anything."

"You tell her you're okay?"

"Yeah. Apparently Dad thinks I'm in Pittsburgh."

"Why Pittsburgh?"

Mike gives him a little grin. "Bought a bus ticket for Pittsburgh when I ran. Got on a bus to Boston instead."

"Devious. Nicely done."

"I miss her."

Harvey doesn't have an answer for that.

"If we went back to New York, like, after final exams, and filed my papers and stuff, could I see her?"

"You don't need my permission."

"But I mean, do you think it's smart?"

Harvey shrugs. "Once you're emancipated, your father can't touch you. You can go wherever you want. You wouldn't have to hide, so yeah. You could see her, tell her you're living in Cambridge. I meant to tell you earlier," he adds, with only a little guilt, "but I might have an internship in New York this summer. They had someone drop last minute and they're trying to poach me from the one I'm set for in Boston."

"Is the one in New York better?"

"About the same. Where I go depends in part on you."

"Me?" Mike asks, surprised.

"Sure. If you want to file your papers, you'll be all right in New York, and you can come with me. If you don't, we'll stay here, I'll work in Boston."

Mike looks at him earnestly. "Which do you want?"

"Doesn't really matter to me. They're both clerical, for the most part. Moving would be kind of a pain," he adds.

Mike considers this. "Can I think about it?"

"Sure. I'll let you know if I get the New York internship, we can decide then."

Two days later, Charles calls.

"I don't want to freak you out or anything but I think we have a potential situation here," Charles says. "Someone just phoned me claiming to be from the Census."

"Do you have strong civil objections to the Census?" Harvey asks.

"He asked for Michael Specter."

Harvey very carefully gives Mike no indication that this is anything other than a casual call from his brother, who is a junior at Northwestern and calls for help sometimes with the strangest things, like girl problems and Calculus. Harvey told him about Mike at Christmas, so Charles is sort of...aware of the fact he has a fake younger brother, but they've never really talked about it in detail.

"What did you say?" he asks, standing and walking to the kitchen, away from Mike and the noise of the TV.

"I said they had the wrong Specter. So then he asks, _Do you have a brother named Michael Specter?_ "

"Charlie -- "

"Chill, I said yes. And _then_ he asked what my brother Michael's birthdate was, and okay, I don't know what his birthdate is? But I'm also not telling some random dude on the phone anyone's birthdate. So I asked why the Census needed to know, and he said something about a records mixup, and I asked if he could give me a call back number, and he asked for Michael Specter's number and bull fucking shit I'm giving him your phone number after that. And when I said no really, I'll have Mike call the Census office, he hung up," Charles concludes. "I don't know if someone was checking to see if our baby brother is really our baby brother, but he's definitely pinged someone's radar."

"You did absolutely the right thing," Harvey tells him.

"Of course I did."

Ah, there's the Specter arrogance in full force. Harvey loves his little brother, and a lot of the time they're very different -- Charles was always the well-behaved one, growing up -- but in some ways they are almost too much alike.

"So what are you going to do?" Charles asks.

"I'll figure something out and let you know."

"Well, good luck. Yell if you need me. Love to our fake brother. Hey, I should meet him at some point."

"I'll have my people call your people."

 

May is a busy month after that. Harvey's studying for finals and Mike, stubbornly, is studying along with him. Mike's taking his GED as well, so dinner is usually a mixture of upper-level law debate and moaning about why Mike has to waste precious brain space knowing and reciting the parts and functions of a cell. ("Membrane, filaments, microtubules, mitochondrion, vacuole, vacuum cleaner, golgi, centrosome, smooth and rough endoplasmic reticulum, large pepperoni, nuclear membrane, nucleus, nuclear bomb, nucleolus." "Nice try, smartass.") By the time Mike's done complaining, Harvey will never forget the difference between Mitosis and Meiosis either.

They have to assemble Mike's emancipation paperwork too, because Harvey is damned if he'll be unprepared if someone does come for Mike. Harvey is going to strike first and strike hard, before this can blow up in his face. So there are many calls to Jessica about filing, about scheduling a hearing, about the fact that Mike's father will have to be notified and may show up. They have to file paperwork to allow Harvey to represent Mike, and secretly make contingency plans if the emancipation application fails. Harvey is making plans apart from Jessica to keep her from being incriminated in them, and he suspects Mike is making plans too, plans he's keeping secret from Harvey, so everyone's keeping secrets from everyone else for their own good and somehow that's probably fair.

Mike comes along with Harvey to his exams. The professors indulgently allow him test booklets, though most make him sit far away from Harvey ("So that you can't cheat off Michael," one of them says to Harvey with stern amusement). On Harvey's final day of exams, he hands Mike a granola bar and some T tokens -- farecards won't be introduced for another year or two, and Harvey will miss the solid elegance of tokens when they go -- and sends him off with good luck wishes to the GED testing site in Boston.

That night they're both exhausted, but there's not much time to rest. They have to catch a train to New York in the morning, and that means they have to pack. Harvey has only one suitcase, but Mike's entire worldly possessions could fit in it with room to spare.

"Should I pack everything?" Mike asks.

"No, leave your stuff. Just take some clothes. Pack your suit," Harvey adds, not really thinking about what Mike's asking.

"But -- if it doesn't work," Mike says. "I should have my stuff with me."

"It'll work."

"But if it doesn't."

Harvey stops folding his clothing into the suitcase and looks up.

"I'll bring it to you," he says, though they both know if Mike goes back to his father, he'll run, and he won't be able to run back to Harvey. If Mike goes back to his father, they may never see each other again.

"How are we gonna get around the fact that I've been..." Mike gestures to the sofa. _That I've been living with you?_

"We're not. In the eyes of the law, the majority of emancipation is in control of the child. By leaving home, you practically emancipated yourself as it is. It'll work in our favor now in a way it wouldn't have when you first moved in." Harvey glances at him. " _Trust me_ , kid." He tosses a few pairs of socks into the suitcase. "Okay, that's my stuff. Pack yours and let's get some sleep."

That night, the next morning, at breakfast and on the train, Mike is silent and pale.

The train takes a little more than three hours to get to New York. From there, Harvey whistles a cab and gives the driver an address Jessica gave him -- one of the junior partners is out of town for the month, sealing some complicated import negotiations in Italy, and Mike and Harvey are staying in his Manhattan condo for the few days they'll be there.

In the bustle of Manhattan, Mike seems nervous, but also oddly at home; Harvey has to remind himself that Mike grew up in New York, just as he did. Sometimes it seems to him Mike simply materialized in Cambridge one day, but perhaps that's wishful thinking. Mike with no past is easier for Harvey than Mike with the past he really has.

Harvey enters the keypad code he got along with the address, and opens the door to the condo. It's pristine and amazing, like a luxury hotel suite, and while he sets the suitcase down and picks up the phone to let Jessica know they've arrived, Mike drifts to the windows looking out on the city.

"The hearing's set for tomorrow," Harvey says, after hanging up. "Your father's been served papers. Everything's in order."

"He'll be there?" Mike asks, though he knows that it's possible. They've been over this before.

"He may show. If he doesn't, that's a strong message about his concern for his parental rights."

"If he does?"

"I'll be there too."


	10. Chapter 10

Harvey supposes it would be too much to hope for that this would end without a fight, so he's unsurprised that Mike's father shows for his hearing, with a lawyer and a couple of buddies in uniform for a cheering section.

He and Mike are early to the courtroom, both in their best suits -- well, Mike in his only suit -- and Harvey's pleased that Mike is the first on the docket for the day. Jessica is there, because Harvey can't act in court without a lawyer as co-counsel, and Harvey knows also this will put him further in her debt, perhaps make him more tractable the next time she decides to metaphorically kick his ass. But she's not going to mother-hen him, either. She's just sitting in a chair on the far side of Mike, fiddling with her fancy new cellular phone.

Harvey is setting out his paperwork, straightening his tie and trying to calm Mike, who is tense and fidgety, when he hears the door open and a voice call out, "Mike!"

Harvey pivots; Jessica looks over her shoulder, and Mike hunches down as he turns. There's a man hurrying down the aisle between benches, an enormous man in a uniform. Mike's father is well over six feet tall and easily two hundred pounds of muscle, but for all that he looks tired, careworn, circles under his eyes and thick frown lines around his mouth. Harvey can see his resemblance to his son, especially with Mike's hair cropped short.

"Mike," he says again, and he's not angry or at least he doesn't sound like it; he sounds almost reverent.

This is, after all, his child.

But Harvey's been around the block enough to know that while it may not be an act it isn't the whole story, and Mike whimpers softly -- a sound Harvey has never heard even when Mike was terrified of him.

Harvey's over the barrier between the benches and the court before he stops to consider the wisdom of it, but it has the desired effect. Eric Ross stops short, in the face of Harvey's considerable glare, and looks down at him.

Later, Jessica will tell the story at dinners with other lawyers, sometimes to clients she wants Harvey to handle, because of the three of them she has the clearest memory of this moment. She remembers, very vividly, seeing twenty-four-year-old Harvey Specter go toe to toe with a man who has at least fifteen years, six inches, and thirty pounds on him.

"Your table is over there," Harvey says, pointing to the one across from his and Mike's.

"I want to see my son," Ross says.

Harvey lifts his chin. "You can see him just fine."

"And you are?"

Harvey _will_ remember Ross looming, later, but in the moment he mostly notices the lines in this man's tired face, the sharp hints of cruelty at the corners of his eyes.

"Michael's legal counsel."

"I'm his father."

"Are you?" Harvey asks, a hint of surprise in his tone.

"Look, I don't know what he's told you, but you know how kids are, they'll say anything to get out of trouble. Mike, you're not in trouble," he adds, sidestepping towards Mike, and Harvey sidesteps too.

There it is.

There is the rage, he can see it in the way Ross's shoulders straighten, just like Mike's do when he's about to take down someone who thinks he's a dumb kid. But in this man it's harder, less defiant and more imposing, and the curl of his hands and burn of his eyes (blue, like Mike's, Harvey thinks distantly) promise violence.

"Go ahead," Harvey says, his voice low. "Give me a reason. Take a swing. I'll have your badge before you can try it twice."

Mike can't hear him, but Jessica can; she's on her feet and calling for the bailiff, but even as she yells out the bailiff announces " _All rise --_ " and Her Honor Judge Dierdre Mirez enters the court.

There's a moment of confusion; the bailiff starts forward, the judge stops, and Harvey doesn't move an inch.

He can hear Judge Mirez sigh, a sigh that says it's going to be one of _those_ days.

"This court will come to order," she announces. Harvey takes a step back, sliding over the barrier again without pulling the door, so that he's still between Mike and his father. He can see, now, a slick-haired man in a suit next to Ross, and a handful of uniform cops behind him.

"Counselor," the judge says, and Harvey turns. "My courtroom is not a jungle-gym."

"Sorry, your honor," Harvey murmurs, eyeing Ross (who is eyeing him back).

"The court is hearing the case of..." she consults her brief, "Michael Ross, application for juvenile emancipation. I assume you're Michael?" she says to Mike. He stands, smoothing down his jacket, and nods. She turns slightly, to take in Ross and his lawyer. "Counselor Eppingham."

"Your Honor," the other man says. They clearly know each other. Harvey hopes this won't weigh against him, doesn't let that hope show on his face.

"Counselor, we appear to have a disproportionate police presence in the courtroom today."

"Your honor, Michael's father is a New York police officer. His fellow officers have come out to support him."

This is bad. They're all in uniform. They look like Defenders Of The Peace. And state court judges are elected; they don't like to piss off cops, because cops have a union, and as the union says, so the cops vote.

Harvey wonders if he should interrupt, point out that this has no bearing on the hearing, but a glance at Jessica (who shakes her head minutely) tells him to keep quiet.

"Before we begin, your Honor," Eppingham continues, "Officer Ross would like to petition the court to be allowed to speak with his son -- he hasn't seen him in six months -- "

"Your Honor, counsel strongly objects," Harvey interrupts.

"Does it now?" Judge Mirez asks. "On what grounds, Mr..." she consults her paperwork again. "Mr. Specter, who I see here is not licensed to practice law in the state of New York."

"He's under supervision, your honor," Jessica volunteers, standing. "I'll be serving as co-counsel."

Judge Mirez smiles, and Harvey relaxes a little. "Ms. Pearson. Another one of your puppies?"

"Soon to be, your honor," Jessica says, smiling back. Harvey is not pleased to be treated as a toddler allowed indulgently to dress himself, but he lets it slide.

"Michael is petitioning for emancipation on the grounds of emotional and physical abuse," he says. "Coercion is not out of the question if his father is allowed to speak with him alone."

There are three reactions he's aware of. The first is the judge, who looks at Mike; the second is Mike, who is visibly shaking at the idea; the third is a wave of murmurs from the uniformed men sitting behind Mike's father.

"Until the court has heard evidence, Mr. Ross's petition will have to wait," Judge Mirez says finally. "Time enough to speak once we've established some groundwork."

The thing is, this might be a courtroom he's never seen before and it might be Harvey's first time in front of a judge and he might only be a second year law student, but this game is not new to Harvey. In some sense he's been playing it since he was a child. Harvey is stubborn and argumentative and independent, which would have been a disastrous combination for his childhood if he weren't also smart enough to back it up.

But he is smart enough, and he's been arguing all his life, and he's been doing it in Moot Court and law school for two years.

Judge Mirez gives a brief summary of what she's read, and Ross's lawyer keeps trying to intervene and object and Harvey keeps counter-arguing and they both push things further than they should, but Judge Mirez is very focused on facts. And so the story emerges, first how Mike is living with Harvey and then how Mike is a runaway with no job, how Mike attends classes with Harvey and is expecting his GED results soon. How Mike has a history of disobedience in school, how he and his father fought over his best friend Trevor, who was arrested for selling pot. Harvey knew that and didn't know that; he'd always assumed the arrest inspired a fight that drove Mike out into the cold with the clothes on his back, but he never asked.

And then there is _that_ question.

What made this fight different? Why did Michael run away?

"Your Honor," Harvey says, delicately. "I have a brief here that may answer your question."

And he hands up a photocopied packet of the hospital records that Jessica found for him, neatly ordered, labeled in his own hand, stapled together.

"We believe this sufficiently illustrates a systematic history of physical abuse by Mr. Ross."

Again the murmuring from the cops behind Ross, and Harvey isn't sure whether that's genuine discussion or noise meant to intimidate him.

"Your Honor, Mike's always been an active boy," Eppingham says. "Whatever trumped-up records -- "

"Objection," Harvey interjects.

"Oh, calm down, Top Gun," Judge Mirez says. "You too, Eppingham, let me read this."

"Mr. Ross merely wishes to point out that most young boys tend to injure themselves," Eppingham says.

Harvey makes a note of Eppingham's name and face. Someday, when he is a lawyer, he is going to find people who are going up against Eppingham and offer his services for the sheer pleasure of humiliating this weasel.

"They don't tend to give false names when they're admitted to the emergency room," Harvey points out.

"Mr. Specter has no proof any records without the name Michael Ross on them belong to Michael."

"Mike remembers dates pretty clearly," Harvey drawls.

"Mr. Specter, this is evidence of injury, but not of abuse," Judge Mirez says.

"It follows a fairly common pattern, Your Honor."

"Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Mr. Specter."

Harvey almost falls silent, but he hears Jessica shift forward slightly.

"Your Honor, we're not trying Mr. Ross for abuse, though I'm pretty sure we could, with that," he says, and Judge Mirez looks at him sharply. "We're merely trying to establish that Michael wishes to avoid a continued abusive situation."

"I would like to point out that Mr. Specter is currently living with Michael, and clearly has ulterior motives for keeping father and son apart," Eppingham says.

Judge Mirez makes a thoughtful noise. "You have been knowingly harboring a truant juvenile for six months, Mr. Specter."

"Setting aside the fact that my position in this case is irrelevant to the _physical abuse_ ongoing in his father's home -- "

"Objection!"

" -- I've been putting food on the table for this kid and clothes on his back," Harvey finishes. "As for ulterior motives, which I understand Mr. Eppingham is implying to be sexual -- "

"That's enough, Mr. Specter," Judge Mirez says. She sets the hospital records down, smooths them though they aren't crumpled, and looks at Mike, curled in on himself, hands clenched in his lap, head bowed.

"Officer Ross, do you have anything to add to your lawyer's arguments?" she asks finally, and her gaze falls on Mike's father.

"I just want to see my son," Ross says. "I love my boy. After his mother died, we've been all we had. We've had some differences, but kids..." he shrugs. "They need structure, discipline. I'd never hurt -- "

" _Liar!_ "

Mike's voice cuts across the room sharply, and Harvey barely manages to catch him as he surges out of his chair, fury in every line of his body.

"You fucking _liar!_ " Mike yells, as Harvey tries to grapple him back. It's surprisingly difficult; Mike is wiry and he has murderous rage on his side. The bailiff is there to help, after a few stunned seconds, and Harvey can hear Ross calling _Michael, Michael!_ behind him as he wrestles Mike back into his seat. Judge Mirez is calling for order.

"He's lying, he always lied!" he snarls, turning to Judge Mirez. "He's lying and everyone _believes_ him because he's a cop and if you send me back -- "

"Young man, be silent or you'll be removed," she says sternly. "You're not helping your case."

Harvey can't help the furious glare he shoots at her. She raises an eyebrow.

"Court will recess for fifteen minutes. Mr. Specter, my chambers," she says.

The bailiff has planted himself firmly between Mike and his father; Jessica is on her feet, and when Harvey shoots her an imploring look, she nods. One of her hands comes to rest on Mike's arm.

Mike's surge of defiance is over; he's sitting in the seat with his head bowed again, and anyway the bailiff is there. Harvey is confident that if Ross tries to get past Jessica, he'll end up with a bloody stump or two, so he shoots Mike one last reassuring look and hurries out of the room.

 

Judge Mirez's chambers are small, lined with books, the few bare walls adorned with posters of paintings by Gauguin. Harvey stays standing after he's shown in, uncertain whether he's about to be ripped a new one by a judge for the first time.

"Sit down," she says. Harvey eases himself carefully into the chair across the desk from her. "Your client's emotional outburst doesn't incline me to trust his maturity."

"He's spent years trying to escape the guy. Can you blame him?" Harvey asks.

"You believe him?" she asks.

"Don't you, after that?"

"Teenagers are manipulative little shits. I have two. I've seen more dramatic performances than that by kids who are just pissed their parents wouldn't buy them a Nintendo," she replies.

"Mike's different. I've never seen him behave like that."

"You haven't known him very long."

"Six months isn't a weekend vacation."

"No, and if nothing else you're to be chastised for not turning him over to Child Protective Services and congratulated on surviving six months with him." Judge Mirez sits back, studying him. "I assume your relationship isn't sexual, as Eppingham implied."

Harvey can't resist asking, because this is the internal workings of the justice system, somewhere he intends to spend his life. "Why?"

"Because you didn't flip out when he implied it. You might be a little mature for your age, Mr. Specter, but no twentysomething sleeping with a teenager is self-assured enough not to protest when he's caught." She folds her hands. "So let me ask you this. How would you define yourself in relation to Michael?"

Harvey frowns. "I don't want to seem flippant, Your Honor -- "

"A little late for that."

He winces.

"I don't think Mike has ever had a friend he could completely trust to be there for him. I do more than that -- I make sure he's safe, I feed him, give him somewhere to sleep -- but that's the part that matters most to him."

"What matters to him is important to you?" she asks.

"Of course."

"Why did you take him in?"

"I didn't want to be responsible for a child freezing to death."

"Where does he sleep?"

The question catches him off-guard. "On my sofa."

"What's an average dinner in your house like?"

"Depends. Is he cooking, or am I?"

That earns him a Look.

"Listen, I'm not going to lie, we eat a lot of Rice A Roni," Harvey says. "But I make chili sometimes, or soup. Spaghetti. He a growing kid, he eats like a machine."

"My files here say he attends classes with you at Harvard. Do you think that's the best use of his time?"

"For him? Yes, I do," Harvey answers. "There's no point in high school for Mike, he's miles beyond it already. He's going to blow the GED out of the water. The professors like him, and it lets me keep an eye on him."

"Why didn't you contact Child Protective Services immediately?"

Harvey sighs. "Look, we both know the system isn't perfect. His dad is a cop, all his pals are cops, you saw that. Mike flipped out when I suggested it, and at the time I figured probably he'd been through that process before and knew he'd just go back to his father. It seemed that I could give him a better life than his father could, and a fairer break than CPS could."

"Sleeping on a sofa, attending classes where he's not enrolled, and Rice A Roni?"

"With all due respect, Your Honor, given the choice between box dinner or a beating, I'm pretty sure I know which you'd choose for your own children."

He's angling for amusement or shock; instead she just narrows her eyes. "You play dirty pool very well for a man of your age, Mr. Specter. I'll look forward to seeing you in my courtroom again."

"We're not talking about me. We're talking about Mike."

"Yes. Michael. Who has no visible means of supporting himself, and whose only community links are within Harvard Law."

"Whose father beats him. Unless you don't believe him, like everyone else in his life except me."

"Don't play the emotions card with me, kid." She leans forward. "Even if I do believe him, I'm going to deny his emancipation appeal. I can't in good conscience approve it, not when he has so few resources with which to support himself. But I tell you what I will do..."


	11. Chapter 11

When Harvey walks back into the courtroom, he knows he probably looks confused. Possibly bowled over. Eppingham catches it and turns to Ross with a grin; Ross smiles back hesitantly.

Ross looks like a nice guy.

Sometimes they do.

Mike sees Harvey's face too, and tenses; Harvey edges past the bailiff and rests a hand on Mike's shoulder, turning to the judge.

"Considering Michael's situation, and taking into account several factors, the court denies the appeal for emancipation," Judge Mirez announces, and Harvey grips Mike's shoulder gently because he can tell the kid's about to run out of the courtroom then and there. Ross looks jubilant.

"However," she continues, "Given the evidence before me, the court also believes that returning to his father at this time is not in the best interests of the child. The court suggests that a separation until emotions cool down a little is the best of all possible worlds. With that in mind, Michael Ross is hereby placed in the legal custody of Harvey Specter until a reconciliation is possible or until the age of eighteen. Eric Ross is not to contact his son but may reciprocate contact if initiated."

There's a second of dumbfounded silence before Harvey can feel Mike relax under his hand. Even through the fear, Mike can see what anyone in the court can see -- that for all her talk of reconciliation, Judge Mirez doesn't want Mike to go back any more than anyone else does, and she's giving him a means to escape.

"Michael," his father says brokenly, and starts forward -- Harvey turns, ready to block him again, but the bailiff is still there. Officer Eric Ross may be imposing but the bailiff has a gun, and one hand on it.

"Bailiff, please escort Mr. Ross out of the building," Judge Mirez says, sounding almost bored. "Next case, please."

There is a strange moment, though Harvey barely registers it, as Ross is being escorted up the aisle to the main exit of the courtroom. Harvey is busy with Mike, because Mike looks like he's about to go catatonic, but he looks up as Ross passes the cronies he brought with him to court...and none of them rise. Not until he's out do they get up, quietly, and follow.

Harvey hustles Mike away from the desk, because other people are coming up to present their cases, and they slip through a side door and into a long, silent hallway that looks elegant and austere but smells like sweat and broken air conditioning.

"Told you we'd win," he says, and Mike drops onto a bench like his legs can't get him any further. Harvey sits next to him, elbows on knees, fingers laced behind his neck. "I can't believe that just happened, actually."

"I'm not going back," Mike says, half-questioning. "You're my legal guardian now."

"Yeah, that's...that was unexpected."

"What does it mean?"

"Guardianship is conditional. The state requires certain standards of living. We have to find a new place, one with a bedroom for you, but I'll get some money, I think -- there's funding for this kind of thing..."

Mike's quiet enough that Harvey turns his head. The kid still looks frightened.

"Aren't you happy?" Mike asks.

Harvey sits up, wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in, Mike's head on his shoulder, his face pressed to Mike's messy hair.

"Yes, I am," he says. "I am."

He hears Jessica's heels clicking on the floor before he sees her; he straightens, letting go of Mike, and when she appears they're sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, waiting for her.

"Well, that was adequate," she tells Harvey. He gives her a nod, acknowledging the compliment. She turns to Mike and adds, "Don't ever shout in a courtroom again."

"No, ma'am," Mike mutters, looking rebellious. Harvey suspects Mike and Jessica may have a long way to go before his first impression of her fades.

Jessica reaches into the small clutch purse she's carrying and hands Harvey an envelope. "I have to be back at the firm. Get something to eat and get some rest. You earned it."

And she's gone, because that's what Jessica does: she arrives, she shoves him up on his own two feet, and she leaves again. Harvey wouldn't have it any other way, not for himself, but he's not Jessica, and he's got Mike's back for another year and a half. He's not going anywhere.

"Come on," he says, after another few minutes of quiet. "I'll buy you a hot dog."

Outside, in the balmy air of early New York summer, standing in line at the hot dog cart, Harvey opens the envelope. There's a hundred dollars in it, presumably for a more elegant meal than hot dogs -- no, probably to give to Mike if things went south. Harvey has a hundred and ten dollars in cash in his wallet, all he could afford to spare, for the same reason. With this money he could take them somewhere nice, really swanky, but he wants a hot dog _now_ and he can see Mike practically salivating for one.

There's also a note in Jessica's handwriting: _Keep the Boston internship._

Good enough for him. He uses one of the twenties to buy lunch, turns around to find somewhere to sit --

And there's a cop standing in front of them, one of the cops who came to the hearing with Ross.

Mike freezes, too startled even to move. Harvey is admittedly scared out of his mind, because now this cop has a gun. But there's nothing to do, so Harvey does what he always does when trapped: he lifts his head defiantly and stares the fucker down.

This guy can't be any older than Harvey, might even be younger, but he's bigger. A lot bigger. And he has a gun.

They form a little tableau for a few seconds, blocking other patrons from the mustard and ketchup dispensers, until the cop speaks.

"Is it true?" he asks Harvey, and then turns to Mike before Harvey can answer. "That true, kid? What this guy said in there?"

Harvey looks to Mike.

Mike nods slowly.

"Nobody believed him before," Harvey says. "Brave of you to consider it now that the legal system is involved."

"I wasn't around last time," the cop replies. "I heard about it, that's all. All I knew was Ross's kid ran off and he wanted him back."

"Well, now you know."

The man looks at Mike again.

"Yeah, I sure do," he says. "Ross won't be at home tonight. Key'll be under the mat. You gentlemen have a nice day," he adds, tipping his hat at them, and walks on. Mike's hand darts out, gripping Harvey's elbow tightly.

"He's gonna kill us," he whispers. "He's gonna follow us and -- "

"No," Harvey says, watching him go. "That wasn't intimidation. Well, not intentional intimidation," he continues, edging to the side as impatient customers shove past him to get to the condiments.

"What was it?" Mike asks.

"We're gonna have to work on your people reading skills," Harvey says. "They're not _all_ buddies."

 

That evening, Harvey watches from a doorway in a run-down neighborhood in Brooklyn as a handful of off-duty policemen walk Eric Ross out of his apartment building. They get into a car. Harvey isn't actually hoping that they drag Mike's dad out of the river tomorrow, but he can't say he'd be overly upset. Probably they'll just scare the bejesus out of him. But that's not the point.

The point is Mike, lurking in the shadows behind him.

"Looks like there are at least a couple of good guys," Harvey says, nodding in the direction the cops have gone.

"The guy driving caught me the first time I ran away," Mike replies. "The door wasn't even closed behind him before Dad was reaching for his belt."

Harvey looks at Mike, surprised. He's never spoken openly about the abuse.

"They're not the good guys," Mike says grimly. "Not all of them. They're just too coward to keep covering for him. Come on."

They climb the stairs to a third-floor apartment, and Mike unlocks the door. Inside it's nice -- nicer than Harvey's place -- but the air is stale and the kitchen is messy, the living room kind of trashed, no bookshelves anywhere.

Mike's bedroom looks like any teenage boy's, perhaps a little cleaner than most -- and sort of like a movie set, like Mike was striving for the trappings of normality and coming up short. It's strange to stand in the doorway and watch Mike sift through his belongings, see him consider and discard the too-small clothing, try on and then toss aside the too-small shoes. There's a single shelf of books, and Mike takes two or three that clearly have meaning, stuffing them into a backpack after removing high school textbooks from six months ago, from another lifetime. He adds a few trinkets, childish toys that were sitting on the windowsill, and a pile of photos from a desk drawer. A student ID from the desk, which leaves a rectangle in the dust. A small stuffed dog from a hiding place behind the bed.

"Do you want your jacket?" Harvey asks, nodding at a dusty coat hanging on a hook on the wall.

"No," Mike says, fingers curling around the sleeves of the letterman jacket he's wearing. "I have one."

He brushes past Harvey, crossing the hall to his father's room. There's a safe in the closet and he opens it, taking papers out: a social security card, a birth certificate. He stuffs them into the backpack and leads the way back out into the living room.

Harvey lingers in the hall, gazing into Mike's bedroom. He thinks this is crueler than taking everything, leaving so much of it. He thinks it's good.

Mike locks the door behind him, and leaves the key under the mat.

"I'd like to go to my old school tomorrow," he says, as they leave the building. The subway's not far, and the night is nice, and it's like they didn't just go raid the place Mike ran from for the last vestiges of his old life. "I didn't tell Jenny I was coming back, but I'd kinda like to see her."

"You want me to come?"

Mike looks at him strangely. "Of course."

Harvey nods.

 

It is the summer of 1999, and the last week of term at Mike's former school. It's a scrubby warehouse-like building with a patch of browning grass out front, a series of bike racks, a chain-link fence around a basketball court. Harvey is leaning on the racks, because technically if they enter the school without checking in at the administrative office, they're trespassing.

A bell rings, loud and old-fashioned, and after about twenty seconds the doors open. Mike, standing nearby, cranes his neck to watch the students stream out.

Harvey can tell Jenny from the others because when she sees Mike, she's standing at the top of a handful of stairs leading up to the front door, and she stops in her tracks. Two other girls with her stop also, follow her gaze, shriek and run forward, but this Jenny girl just stands there.

Mike has been noticed, and the half-grown children begin to crowd around him, but his head is lifted up to gaze at Jenny, who's staring back from twenty feet away. Harvey doesn't know what it is -- puppy love or friendship or recrimination or some deeper bond that hasn't got a name. He finds himself narrowing his eyes at her, judging her worthiness.

Mike pushes through the crowd of teenagers and Jenny comes down the steps. Other girls are crying, but Jenny is not; she folds Mike into a hug, talking quietly in his ear.

They are objects of curiosity, or rather Mike is; Harvey is ignored as the students gather in a huddle and talk about Mike, ask each other questions. Finally, Mike breaks away from Jenny and takes her hand, dragging her up to Harvey, and now all the kids are interested in Harvey, too.

"Jen, this is Harvey," he says. "He's been helping me out. Harvey, this is Jenny."

Jenny looks up at him with a piercing gaze, and Harvey realizes that as much as he had been measuring her against his standards for Mike, she's known Mike a hell of a lot longer than he has -- and she's measuring him, too.

"Can we walk her home?" Mike asks, into the silence, almost hesitant.

"Lead the way," Harvey replies, and follows a half-step behind them.

Mike talks, mostly. Jenny asks questions as they walk, but Mike fills the silence with stories about Cambridge and Boston, about Scotty and the other 2Ls. The two of them hold hands, bump shoulders, seem familiar in a way Mike would never allow with someone else.

Jenny doesn't have much to say about Trevor, when Mike asks, but Mike seems almost relieved by that.

When they stop in front of a nice little house with a tidy lawn and a small front porch -- idyllic, domestic, half a mile from the apartment Mike grew up in -- Jenny hesitates.

"You want to come in?" she asks. "My mom'd like to see you."

Mike kicks at the pavement, shrugs. "We have to get back. Maybe next time."

"Are you coming back anytime soon?"

Another shrug. "Don't know yet."

"Can I have your phone number?"

Mike looks to Harvey for permission. He hesitates, because Jenny seems trustworthy but he has no guarantee Mike's father won't go after her. But it's not like Harvey Specter would be difficult to track down, for a police officer, and Mike deserves a lifeline to normality.

And anyone who's kept up with Mike for fifteen years probably deserves a little trust.

He nods, a small gesture, and Mike grabs Jenny's hand, taking a pen out of his pocket, writing the number on her palm. They hug a second time, and Jenny goes up into the pretty little house, stopping in the doorway to wave.


	12. Chapter 12

They catch the early train back to Boston the next morning, and the T from there to Cambridge, and use some of the money Jessica gave Harvey to indulge in a cab for the rest of the journey. Mike is quiet again, but more from exhaustion than fear.

Harvey can't stop stealing glances at him, because before Mike was just...this kid who lived in his apartment and followed him around. Now Mike belongs to him, now he's officially responsible for making sure he doesn't get arrested or go hungry or wander into traffic. He did all that before, but now other adults who are older and presumably wiser than Harvey have invested him with the responsibility.

When they get home, Harvey makes a call and declines the New York summer internship, then steals the paper from the neighbors who never pick theirs up anyway and begins looking through it for two-bedroom apartments. Mike makes sandwiches.

At two in the afternoon, the buzzer goes, and Harvey opens the door to find Dana Scott on his doorstep.

"Judge Mirez is my aunt," she says calmly. "She called me to ask about you."

"That's a gross breach of court etiquette," Harvey points out.

"Mike's not your brother. Nor is he eighteen. Is his name even Mike?" she asks.

"Harvey?" Mike calls from the apartment doorway. His face breaks into a smile when he sees who it is. "Scotty! Hi!"

Harvey gives her a look that demands, rather than begs, her not to make his life any harder than it already is. But he stands aside to let her in, and Mike calls out to ask if she wants a sandwich.

"No thanks, Mike. Jesus, loser, you live here?" she asks Harvey, looking around.

"Not all of us have Daddy paying tuition and rent," Harvey replies.

"Mommy's paying tuition and rent, but your lame burn is noted," she says, studying his bookshelf. "What are your plans for the summer?"

"Internship with Booker & Booker," Harvey replies. "You returning to the hell dimension whence you came?"

That earns him a grin from Scotty, before she turns to sit on the sofa, facing Mike.

"So," she says. "What's your real name?"

Harvey, who hasn't come forward into the room very far, slams the door open. He doesn't mean to do it; it's an immediate, visceral reaction.

"Get out," he says. She opens her mouth. "No. Leave my home. You don't come here and pull that bullshit on him."

"It's okay," Mike says quietly, and Harvey looks at him. He turns to Scotty. "My real name is Michael Specter," he tells her calmly. "Unless you think I'm _not real._ "

Harvey has never seen Scotty at a loss for words before.

"I'm sorry," she says, after a moment. "Harvey's right, that was inexcusable. I'll go."

"You don't have to," Mike tells her. Harvey stays quiet, standing in the doorway.

"I couldn't stay long anyway," she says. "Are you...sticking around? I mean will I see you next year?"

"Yeah," Mike grins. " _We'll_ be around."

Scotty nods, stands elegantly, like she didn't just get her ass gently handed to her by a teenager. "Harvey, walk me out?"

Harvey follows her out, down the steps from the front door, down the sidewalk.

"So you're a dad now," Scotty says, as they walk.

"I prefer to remain his brother," Harvey replies. "If you tell anyone, Scotty -- "

"I wouldn't do that to Mike."

Harvey nods. Scotty would absolutely do that to Harvey, but not with Mike in the picture.

"I'm a little jealous," she admits. "My actual brothers wouldn't do this for me. I'd be hard pressed to do it for them. I've always thought it was weird, you taking him in."

"Me too."

"How bad was it?" she asks, and she's not asking about the trip to New York or the last six months.

"That's something you should ask Mike, if you want to know," he says, and then adds, "Bad enough. It was...bad."

"He seems..." then she shakes her head. "He doesn't seem traumatized."

"How is that supposed to look, exactly?"

Scotty shrugs. "I'm being honest, Harvey. It's a shock, okay?"

He stops, and she swings around to face him.

"Get lost," he says. "Go have a nice summer. Leave us alone. Adjust or whatever you need to do, but don't get your mess all over him, okay? Enough people have done that to him."

She looks hurt and defiant and resigned, all at once. In some way he wants to take back what he said -- the cruelty of it, at least -- but he finds it hard to regret anything he does to defend Mike.

"I'll see you in the fall," he adds, and she nods.

"Seeya then. Loser," she says, and gives him enough of a smile that he doesn't really worry he's permanently damaged Scotty's massive ego.

 

The first month of summer and their last in Harvey's dump of an apartment passes quickly. Harvey's settling into the internship, but it's a long-hours job and he still has the commute to and from Boston, so he's gone more than he'd like. On the other hand, Mike is gone almost as much as he is -- he spends every morning tracking down apartments for rent, and every afternoon looking at them. Harvey isn't sure what Mike's looking for in specific, but there's definitely something Mike wants, and it takes him a while to find it.

When he finally does, Harvey knows because he walks in the door to find the floor piled with collapsed packing boxes, the coffee table cluttered with markers Mike has squirrelled out of every nook in the room and rolls of packing tape that Harvey thinks Mike may have stolen from the law library's supply closet.

Mike presents him gravely with a lease. Harvey reads over the legalese, noting places Mike has highlighted as being of particular importance, and then signs the lease sight-unseen. He trusts Mike, and anyway Harvey doesn't much care where he lives as long as he's near the school and the train.

"Oh, and this came today too," Mike adds, tossing him an envelope. Harvey looks down.

"These are your GED results," he says.

"Yeah, I know," Mike replies cheerily. Harvey lifts the flap (already opened, the kid could have emailed him) and takes the paperwork out.

Straight eights.

Eight hundred is the highest score possible on each of the five sections of the GED. Mike's cumulative score is four thousand. He just got the equivalent of a perfect SAT score. Twice.

Harvey thinks wildly that all that Mitosis and Great Gatsby and FDR Economic Policy paid off. His chest feels weirdly tight.

"I wish I could say I was surprised," he manages, but he can't hold onto the attitude that Mike should have earned nothing less. He smiles at Mike, and Mike looks warm and self-satisfied and proud. "So, dinner?"


	13. Chapter 13

The first time he sees their new apartment -- and having seen where Mike grew up -- Harvey understands what Mike was looking for.

It's a small place, on the second floor of a three-floor building that, like many of the buildings in the area, has clearly been remodeled from a single-residence house. There's a separate kitchen and living room, a bedroom off the kitchen for Mike and a slightly bigger one off the living room for Harvey. (There's a microwave in the kitchen. It's kind of embarrassing how excited Harvey is about that.)

But despite its small square footage, the ceilings are high, ten or twelve feet, and the whole place feels light. There are huge windows. There's central heat too, no radiators, and when Mike flips a switch, air conditioning comes on. He must have driven a hell of a bargain to get this place for the rent they're paying.

Mike shows him around, gleeful, banging cupboard doors and opening the sliding door that lets out onto the tiny wooden balcony. Harvey's room and the living room both have doors to it; Mike's bedroom has a fire escape.

"Do you like it?" Mike asks, when he's given Harvey the more-than-grand tour.

"It's great," Harvey says, standing in front of the windows, looking down onto the tree-lined street below.

Two weeks later, on the day they're supposed to move in -- Mike has ebulliently packed everything they own, and Harvey has charmed a pickup truck out of Harvard University Facilities -- the buzzer goes while Harvey's only half-awake, deprived of his coffee because Mike packed the jar of Instant.

"I got it," he calls, and Mike calls back _Okay!_ from the bathroom.

Harvey steps out into the foyer, opens the door --

And there's Charles, standing on the doorstep, wearing a Northwestern sweatshirt and carrying an overnight bag.

"Hiya," Charles says, like they see each other all the time, like coming from Chicago to Cambridge is no big deal.

"Charlie?" Harvey asks.

"You're speechless? I'll mark the calendar," Charles replies, and then pulls Harvey into a tight hug. It takes Harvey a second to react, to hug back.

"What are you doing here?" Harvey asks, leading him into the foyer, through to his apartment.

"Mike emailed," Charles replies, then grins when Harvey stares at him. "What? We might email all the time, you don't know we don't."

"Mike?" Harvey calls.

There's a rustling noise, and then Mike emerges from the bathroom, dressed but damp, looking sheepish.

"Surprise," he says.

"I'm here to help you guys move. I understand contractually that requires you to buy me pizza and beer," Charles announces.

"I'm taking away your email privileges," Harvey tells Mike.

It's nice to have Charles there, though -- they don't see each other much -- and he's helpful. He chatters at both of them while they load the truck, getting to know Mike, telling Harvey about Northwestern and what his plans for the fall are. Charles is doing something very complicated and sciencey with an eye towards med school, and Mike is appropriately impressed. A few times Harvey catches Charles looking at their fake little brother with surprise, and he isn't sure if it's surprise over something Mike's said or surprise over his existence, like maybe he keeps expecting it to be just him and Harvey, as it's been since their parents died.

"So what do you think of him?" Harvey asks, when they've left Mike at the new place to unpack the boxes, going back for the furniture.

"I think you know how to pick 'em," Charles answers. "It's kind of unbelievable."

"What, his brain? I know, it's -- "

"No, Bar," Charles says, using the nickname he gave Harvey as a two-year-old, not quite able to pronounce either Brother or Harvey or properly separate the two concepts. Harvey hasn't heard it in a long time. "I was talking about you, taking him in."

All morning, Harvey has thought how someone looking at Charlie and Mike would easily buy that they're related. Both Harvey and Charles were blond children, but Harvey's hair darkened more. Charlie's is only a shade or two past Mike's. Charlie got their mother's face, narrower and sharper than Harvey's; his dark eyes aside, he _looks_ like Mike.

And Harvey has considered that maybe, the night he found Mike shivering in his doorway, he was thinking about Charles: about how if his little brother ever ended up cold and hungry and far from home, he'd give anything to know that someone would take him in, give him a hot meal, and make sure he was safe. Charles is well capable of looking after himself, but Harvey still frets occasionally that they're so far apart, that if Charles got hurt Harvey couldn't be there to help him.

"I don't know if it's that surprising," he replies.

Charles looks at him.

"No, maybe not," he says, and slams the tailgate shut. "Anything else we need?"

"Nope." Harvey drops the keys to the old place into the landlord's mailbox and climbs into the truck.

Once everything is unloaded, Mike looks beat and Charles is, after all, their guest; Harvey tells them to stay there and unpack, knowing they'll probably just plug in the TV and collapse on the couch while he goes to get the requisite pizza and beer. It's a tough gig, being the oldest.

Charles has never had Pinnochio's, so Harvey swings by and puts in an order, then ducks into the liquor store nearby to pick up a six pack. It's a Saturday night and Pinnochio's is busy, but they usually put a hustle on for carry-out and in half an hour Harvey is juggling two large pizzas and the beer as he unlocks the front door of the building. The door to their unit is open; he steps inside, intending to announce that dinner is served, but he hears quiet voices from the kitchen. And frankly he's very interested to know what Charles and Mike could have to say to each other without his presence.

He sets the boxes quietly on the coffee table, haphazardly placed in front of the couch pushed up against a wall, and soft-foots closer to the kitchen doorway.

"No, if you twist it -- there," Mike says, and there's a clatter as some dish or cup falls into place.

"Hey, it worked." Charles sounds surprised.

"Simple physics," Mike replies.

"You're an impressively smart kid, you know?" Charles answers, and Harvey smiles a little. He worried, has worried a lot, about how Charles would react if he ever met Mike in person. He should have known better. Charles is...better than Harvey in many ways, more open, more friendly, and Mike is a charmer.

"Thanks," Mike says, but his voice is hesitant.

"What, I touch a nerve?"

"No," Mike answers. "Just...you know, most grownups don't notice. Or if they do they don't like it. Dad sure never did."

Suffocating Eric Ross in his sleep isn't off the table for Harvey yet. It would be so _satisfying._ He can imagine how a man like Ross would react to being outsmarted by his adolescent son.

"Well, you've got Harvey now," Charles says. "If there's one thing Harvey respects, it's brains."

Mike makes a small noise, a thoughtful _hmm_ , and Harvey wonders what that means. Because he does respect Mike, and Mike has to know that; how could he not?

"What happens when I turn eighteen?" Mike asks. "I mean. Don't tell him. I just kind of wonder."

Oh Michael.

"What do you think'll happen?" Charles asks. "You think he's gonna throw you out or something? Listen to me, Mike. God knows Harvey has issues. He's always been private and next to nobody gets behind the walls. I do because I'm his brother and he has to love me. You did too, I don't know how, but once you're in, the walls go back up. You're not getting out. Blood or not, you have a brother for life. He'll look after you, if you need it, for as long as you need it, for as long as he can."

"You think?" Mike asks, and Harvey can't let that uncertainty stand, so he steps into the kitchen.

"If he's thinking that food is here, he's right," he says, holding up the beer. "Touch the half with olives on it and pay the price."

"Nobody wants your gross olive pizza," Charles says, rolling his eyes and taking the beer Harvey hands him. Harvey takes one for himself, tosses a soda to Mike, and puts the rest in the fridge.

In the living room, Charles and Mike have already opened the pizza boxes and settled in on the couch. Harvey drops down next to Mike, taking a bite of olive pizza while pointedly leaning in Charles' direction. Mike elbows him back, laughing.

"So," Charles says, around a mouthful of pepperoni. "You're the new baby, Mike, that makes me the middle child. Does this mean I get to act out?" he asks Harvey.

"You wouldn't know acting out if it bit you in the ass," Harvey replies.

"That's okay, you do enough for both of us." Charles retorts, and launches into a story Harvey would really rather not remember, about an incident when he was fourteen and Charles was twelve, involving Harvey narrowly escaping getting a tattoo when the guys at the tattoo studio caught him with a fake ID.

"What were you going to get?" Mike asks, round-eyed.

"I don't remember," Harvey says. "Something tasteless, probably."

"Star Trek badge, I bet," Charles puts in. Harvey flicks an olive at him. "Eugh!"

By the time the pizza is finished and the beer is almost gone, Charles has his newest gadget out: a digital camera he borrowed from the university IT department, a big clunky thing that boasts one point three megapixels, state of the art for its time.

"For posterity," he announces, when Harvey protests that all three of them look like hell.

"Come on, Harvey," Mike wheedles, and Mike whining for anything is rare enough that Harvey groans and waves for Charles to take the photo already.

Instead Charles props the camera on two boxes, peers through it to make sure it's focused, hits the timer, and runs back to the couch, flopping down next to Mike and throwing an arm around his shoulders. Harvey can't stand to be one-upped, so he does the same just before the blinding flash of the camera.

A year and a half from now, on his second day at the DA's office, a really scary but kind of hot admin named Donna will catch sight of the print of that photo, framed and set on Harvey's postage-stamp-sized desk. Harvey's hair is touseled, Mike looks exhausted and tiny sandwiched between them, and Charles has photograph red-eye. There's at least three beer bottles and the edge of a pizza box in the picture, and it's not the most high-resolution in the world.

"Who are they?" she'll ask.

And Harvey will answer, grinning, proud, "My brothers."


	14. Chapter 14

It is the fall of 1999, the first day of classes. Over the summer, Napster has hit the internet, Lance Armstrong has won his first Tour de France, and Mike (following the race avidly) has saved up his money from his legitimate summer job at Curious George & Friends and bought a bike. He still walks to class with Harvey in the mornings, though, and on the first class of the first day, Professor Lewis stops Mike at the door.

"Your exam results," he says, and hands Mike a stack of test booklets.

Mike looks up at him, startled. "But those were just...an exercise. I mean, practically a joke."

Lewis shrugs. "They were adequate. We saw no reason not to assign them scores. These scores would put you somewhere around fortieth in the class ranking, as Professor Johnson calculated, which compared to your brother is shameful but does provide pretty good motivation for the twenty-odd ranked below you. Will you be attending 3L?"

Harvey and Mike talked about this, whether Mike should stay on at the store, earning his own money and getting work experience, or whether he should attend classes. It was a tough decision. Harvey wonders still if his desire for Mike to attend with him has more to do with him wanting Mike under his eye. But the education will stand him in good stead when he starts college, which he can't do until at least the spring semester and probably not until next year, and it gives him time in the evenings to work on applications.

"Yes, sir," Mike says, straightening.

"Then I'll expect your performance to improve," Lewis says, and gestures briskly for them to be seated.

It's a strange school year, undeniably. Every day, Mike becomes more and more a part of the 3L cohort; he goes to class, sometimes even speaks in discussion, sits in on study groups. Every evening, he researches schools in New York, working on college applications alongside his homework. Mike seems untroubled by the dissonance of this, but it bothers Harvey. Perhaps most of all it bothers Harvey that Mike doesn't seem to need his help. And that one of the schools Mike is looking at (Harvey's not really supposed to know this, but he snoops a little) is Stanford, on the other side of the country.

After first-semester exams, Mike's unofficial rank in class jumps to twenty-ninth; respectable, but not everything he's capable of, and Harvey knows it even if Mike seems satisfied.

"He's simply not mature enough yet for the practice of law," Bennet tells him, when he finally screws up the guts to talk to her about Mike's future over the holiday break.

"Half the class is behind him," Harvey points out.

"Yes, and if he were a real student at Harvard he would earn his JD this May. I don't doubt if he took the Bar he could pass it. But I don't think he should," she replies.

"Then what should he do? He's done half a law degree. You really think he'd be happy, what, taking prelaw?"

She studies him. "You're bound for New York after this year, yes?"

"I have a job waiting for me with the DA's office."

"I have to say that's a little surprising, Harvey. I pegged you for a private practice gunslinger." She gives him a smile. "Or is this orders from your guardian angel?"

"Orders," he admits. Jessica has made it very clear what Harvey's next step on the path is to be, and Harvey might not like it but he trusts her wisdom in this.

"It'll do you good. And Mike?"

"Coming with me. I hope. He has early-admission offers from half the schools in the city, most of them with generous scholarships."

She sighs. "Michael will be a great lawyer. Could be, if that's what he wants. But do you know if that's what he wants? Does he?"

Harvey stops before he answers, because -- he doesn't really know what Mike wants. Mike has been quiet on the subject. And Harvey knows Mike got an envelope from Stanford.

"He's still very much a boy, Harvey, and he hasn't had much time lately to be a boy. He needs experience that only comes with time, and independence that comes with experience. He needs to go to real college, as himself and not Harvey's kid brother, not with big brother sitting with him for every class. So maybe..." she spreads her hands. "It's time to let Mike go a little. Let him go to college, and if he's bored, well, that will help him decide what he wants. But he needs to know the kind of opportunities open to someone like him. Law isn't the only field in which he could excel. For one thing, given the quality of his case writeups, I suspect he'd make a good novelist," she adds drily.

"So what do I do?"

"Well, ideally he would have been the one sitting here with me, not you, for a start. That said, you can convey my thoughts, if you like, and you can urge him to choose for himself, rather than to please you. Don't discourage him, Harvey, nobody wants that. Just...step back and let him decide."

Professor Lewis is more direct. He shows up at Harvey and Mike's place one afternoon, a few days before Christmas, and hands Mike a sealed envelope.

"What's this, sir?" Mike asks, standing in the living room, studying it.

"That's a letter of recommendation, and some other paperwork," Lewis says. He's sitting on Harvey's sagging sofa, a cup of hastily-made coffee in one hand. "If you send it to NYU Law, you'll be admitted. I have some connections there who are very interested in you."

"I don't have a degree."

"I'm well aware, but I see no point in you wasting your time on undergraduate studies," Lewis tells him dismissively. "Kegs and fraternities." He sniffs. "Go for the throat, boy. NYU isn't Harvard, of course, but it's a good school and you can always transfer later if you find it unchallenging."

Harvey rests a hand on Mike's neck. "Say thank you," he murmurs.

"Thank you, sir," Mike says, a depth of sincerity in his voice that's almost embarrassing.

"Thank me by shaming your cohort into trying harder; you could leave Harvard at least in the top twenty if you put some elbow into it," Lewis says. He hands Harvey his undrunk coffee. "As for you, don't coddle the boy. If he's good enough to keep up, he's good enough to excel."

"No, sir," Harvey says. "Wouldn't dream of it."

Mike is quiet that afternoon. After dinner he goes to his room, and Harvey paces and frets for a while before going to talk to him, a talk he really should have had after his interview with Bennet.

He knocks on the frame of Mike's open door -- Mike's room at his father's place had no door, something Harvey noticed when they were there, and so he doesn't come into Mike's room without permission. It's one of the few things he can think of to concretely show Mike that part of his life is done for good.

"Talk to you?" he asks. Mike, sitting on the bed with a book, looks up and nods. Harvey settles on the edge of the bed, and Mike puts the book aside.

"This is about Professor Lewis, isn't it?" Mike says.

"Not really," Harvey replies. "Kind of. It's about you. I've been putting this off but I think we need to talk about where you're going after the school year ends."

"Aren't I coming with you?" Mike asks nervously.

"That's an option. It's not your only option, though. You have a lot of opportunities waiting for you, and I don't want..." Harvey pauses. "I want you to pick the one that suits you, not the one you think will make me happy."

"Not much difference," Mike points out.

"I think maybe there is. Or could be," Harvey says. "Listen, I just -- don't want you to think I'll be angry if you don't want to study law. We're in this together, okay? If you want to go to New York and study, I don't know, modern dance -- "

Mike bursts out laughing. "What?"

"Furthest thing I could think of from law," Harvey admits.

"Seriously, Harvey, modern dance?"

"Well, maybe you have a secret passion," Harvey says with a wry smile. "My point is, if you want to study something else, even maybe somewhere else, that's okay."

"Do you want me to come to New York with you?"

"Yes. But what I want can't be what you base your life on, Mike."

Mike scoots closer, leaning in cautiously to rest his forehead against Harvey's shoulder.

"It's not like it was," Harvey says. "You won't be punished, whatever you decide. You could come to New York and live in a dorm, we'd still see each other on weekends and stuff."

"Could I live with you?"

"Sure. I stop getting paid for you when you turn eighteen, but you could get student loans to split the rent."

"Even after I turn eighteen, though, I could live with you?"

"What, I'm gonna kick you back out into the snow?" Harvey rubs Mike's hair. "I could use a roommate. I don't think ADAs make very much."

"I appled to Stanford," Mike says suddenly. He leans back and looks up at Harvey. "It's a general undergraduate admission, but the School of Engineering has offered me a partial scholarship if I declare an Engineering major."

"You could build robots," Harvey says, grinning.

"In California, though."

"We can email."

"You think I should?"

"I think it's a big step," Harvey says. "If Stanford's where you want to go, you should go. If NYU Law is where you want to go, you should go. I can't make this call for you."

Mike looks down at his hands. "I really like law. I just don't know what else is out there."

"You're young. If you don't like where you go, you can always transfer."

"Yeah I guess. Maybe I'll just take the Bar with you."

"Mike, nobody's going to hire someone without a JD."

"Sure they will."

"Oh? You have some kind of plan?"

"Of course." Mike straightens primly. "Mock interview. Go on. Hi, I'm Michael Specter."

Harvey ignores that unless Mike changes his name he's probably going to have to call himself Ross. "Harvey Specter. Nice to meet you. So I see here on your resume you don't have a degree."

"Nope," Mike says, grinning. "But I promise you, Mr. Specter, I'm the most interesting interview you'll have all day."

Harvey has to admit, it's a good gambit, and Mike knows it. So he puts on his sternest face and says, "Michael. _Go to college._ "

"Yeah, fine," Mike says, but he's still grinning. "You know -- I didn't tell you this..." he starts to laugh, and Harvey peers at him, confused.

"I applied to Harvard too," Mike says, still laughing. "Undergraduate. They turned me down."

" _What?_ " Harvey asks, offended on Mike's behalf. " _Harvard_ rejected you?"

"They were my safety school!" Mike falls back on the bed, still laughing.

"Why didn't you get into Harvard? You're _already going to Harvard._ "

Mike wipes tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes. "I think Professor Lewis told them not to. You know how he is. Undergrad!" he says, and sniffs derisively.

"I can't believe you didn't get into Harvard. You've brought shame on our house," Harvey informs him.

"I know, I'm unforgivable," Mike sits up again. "Seriously, though. I don't have to decide right now, right?"

"Nope. We've done the future career talk, and you will go to college somewhere, but it's up to you now. I wash my hands of you, you failure."

"Okay. I'll tell you when I decide?"

"Sure. If you want advice, I'm here, just...if you want orders, that's not gonna be me, Mike."

Mike salutes. "Message received."

 

Christmas comes and goes with very little comment about his schooling from Mike; New Year's, too.

Mike stays in for the holiday, but Harvey goes out with the 3Ls who are in town. It's the year 2000, they're practically living in THE FUTURE, and admittedly Harvey has kind of missed partying. He drinks more than he probably should, and comes home at one in the morning to find Mike on the couch, reading, New Year's news coverage still on the TV.

"Hey," he says, shedding his coat. "Happy New Year, kid."

Mike looks up. "Happy New Year," he answers.

"I thought you'd be in bed by now."

"Nah, I thought I'd wait up. You have fun?"

"Yeah," Harvey says, starting for the kitchen, but he stumbles and laughs. "Maybe one too many," he admits, straightening and continuing on.

Silence rather than laughter follows; Harvey stops in the doorway of the kitchen. Mike is watching him, body twisted around on the couch, and when he sees Harvey look back he turns quickly.

"Something wrong?" Harvey asks.

"No, nothing's wrong," Mike replies. Harvey walks back to the couch, seating himself on the coffee table. Mike looks up at him, back at his book, up at him.

"Seriously, what is it?" Harvey asks.

"Nothing," Mike insists. Harvey reaches out to rest a hand on his arm -- a gesture of reassurance -- and Mike flinches away violently.

It occurs to Harvey, through a slightly scotch-flavored haze, that Mike's never seen him drunk. It doesn't happen a lot, and even less since Mike's been around.

"Oh, God," he mumbles, pulling his hand back. "Mike -- "

"It's nothing, everything's fine," Mike insists, sliding around past Harvey to stand. "I'll just go to bed -- "

"Mike, I'm not going to hurt you," Harvey says, but he doesn't get up as Mike hesitates in the kitchen doorway.

"I -- I know that, I mean, I know you wouldn't -- " Mike stutters out, then falls silent. He has his book still, clenched in one hand like he's going to have to defend himself with it. "I'm sorry. It's not you."

"Your father," Harvey says. Mike nods. "Jesus, I'm going to kill that son of a bitch, Mike, I swear to God."

"Don't," Mike replies. "Just -- don't say that kind of thing. Not right now."

Harvey nods. He wants to stand, wants to go grab Mike and hug him to prove he's not going to hurt him, but he's pretty sure that's bad judgment talking.

"I'm going to bed," he says instead. "You should too. You can lock your door, I won't be upset."

Mike hesitates, like he might come forward, but then he grips the book tighter. "Okay. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it. I'll see you in the morning."

He stays there, sitting on the coffee table, until he hears Mike's door slam -- and yes, the snick of the lock in the knob.

"Way to start the new year, Specter," he says to the empty room, then gets up and goes to bed. His hangover will only be just punishment.

In the morning, Harvey stumbles out into the kitchen, head pounding, to find Mike quietly eating a bowl of cereal. He nods, which is about all he can handle at the moment, and pours himself a cup of coffee. Blissful, blessed coffee.

"So I've decided," he says, as he seats himself across from Mike, "anything that happens before you go to bed doesn't count as the new year."

"Okay," Mike says slowly.

"Last night, our whole mess, that was 1999. This is 2000. Yay, nobody's computer crashed," Harvey says.

Mike gives him a relieved smile. "Happy New Millennium."

"Happy New Millennium. In which you and I are both going to _dominate_ ," Harvey informs him. "Pass the Cap'n Crunch."

He tries to forget Mike's past. Mike doesn't have that luxury. As they eat, Mike devoting half his time to the newspaper next to his breakfast, Harvey reminds himself that he has to think about someone else now, when he makes bad decisions.

Even Jessica's rigorous asskicking over Harvey's many and varied bad decisions never prepared him for this.

Two days into the new semester, on an evening when Mike's at the library and Harvey is at home trying to sort out his Bar prep schedule, the phone rings.

"I'm calling for Michael Ross?" the man on the other end of the line says, and Harvey's blood runs cold.

"I'm afraid he's out," he replies. "I can take a message, if you want."

He expects a hang-up, or for it to be Eric Ross's lawyer, or any one of a number of disasters, but instead the man on the other end says brightly, "Oh, is this Mr. Specter?"

"Yes," Harvey says warily.

"I wanted to speak to you too. My name is Alex Everett, I'm the senior admissions manager for NYU Law. First, I just want to say we're so thrilled that Michael's chosen to attend -- we've heard great things about him from Jerome Lewis -- "

"Wait, what?" Harvey asks.

"Michael. Attending NYU?" Everett seems uncertain now. "We got his application, and his confirmation letter yesterday..."

"Oh -- oh that," Harvey says stupidly. "Right, of course."

"Anyway, I needed to speak to you because you're his guardian, and I understand Mike won't turn eighteen before he registers for classes, which means we need you to co-sign some papers. His FAFSA, of course, and he needs consent from you for an official admission..."

Everett goes off into a million details, about scholarships and student loans and how he understands Mike is a _special case_ , but there's this weird disconnect, because Harvey's busy feeling the kind of pride he hasn't felt since Charlie got into Northwestern. And Harvey didn't even have to tell Charles what to do, Charles just went off and did it, but Mike wasn't sure and wanted his advice and picked NYU Law even though he could have gone to Stanford to get a degree in building shiny things.

"So I'll send that packet to you, then," Everett says.

"Yeah, that's fine," Harvey agrees, clueless as to what packet Everett is talking about.

"And you'll have Mike call me? I'd just like to go over some options with him. Will he need housing?"

"I'm not sure -- Mike will know."

"Great. So good to speak to you, Mr. Specter. I look forward to hearing from Mike. Have a good evening," Everett says, and hangs up.

Harvey sets the phone down, considers the paperwork spread out in front of him for a minute, then walks away from all of it, pulls on his boots and coat, and strolls down to Harvard Square.

Mike is just clocking out at the shop; he sees Harvey and waves, says something to his manager, and bounds out.

"Hey! I said I'd be home after my shift. What's up?" Mike asks. "Library?"

"Nope," Harvey says. "Dinner."

"Dinner out?" Mike asks. Dinner out is a rare treat for them, even if it's just pizza.

"I thought so."

"Any special occasion?" Mike asks, as they start to walk.

"Nah, just felt like it," Harvey says. "Although..."

"Yeah?"

"My little brother did just accept an offer from NYU Law."

Mike stops, paling.

"They called me," Harvey says gently. "About some admissions paperwork."

He lets a smile break over his face, a smile of pleased pride, and pulls Mike into him.

Mike holds on, fingers tightening in Harvey's coat. It's been a little over a year since Harvey found him blue with cold on his doorstep, since Mike warily accepted hot food and a place to sleep from a stranger. He can't figure out what he filled his life here in Cambridge with before Mike, and he can tell in the way brothers can that Mike doesn't know how he survived before Harvey found him.

"Easy, kid," he says, as Mike's arms tighten.

"Thank you, Harvey," Mike mumbles.

"What for? You did all the heavy lifting," Harvey replies, and pulls back enough to kiss Mike's forehead. Mike lets go, beaming. "Come on, let's get something to eat."


	15. Chapter 15

It is January, 2001. The world population has just reached six billion. Pops Staples died in December. Harvey hasn't listened to the radio in two months, because Creed is top of the charts and it's _unbearable_.

Mike is eighteen, just starting his second semester at NYU, and Harvey has been expecting this moment since his birthday eight days ago.

He comes home from work earlier than usual, bringing files with him because a lot of people got arrested over New Year's and it's his job to prosecute a lot of them. Mike is sitting on the sofa, holding a mug of coffee, not drinking it.

"Hey, how were classes?" Harvey asks, setting his briefcase down.

"Okay," Mike says distantly.

Harvey watches him. "Is something wrong?"

"I didn't go to Criminal Law," Mike says. "My dad showed up on campus."

Harvey has been expecting this, but the shock of adrenaline still kicks through him like an electric charge. "What did he do?"

Mike shakes his head. "Nothing. I saw him before he saw me."

"Did you call campus security?"

Another headshake. "Went out a first-floor window on the other side of the building. I came home, but..." he looks down at his coffee. "He knew what class I was in, Harvey. He has to know where we live."

Harvey hasn't taken precautions against Mike's father finding them, because he's not going to live in fear and he's not going to make Mike live in fear. He's not in the phone book, his number is blocked, but that's been the extent of it.

"What'm I gonna do?" Mike asks. "I can't just not go to school. I'm gonna get reamed for missing Criminal Law today as it is."

"If he goes after you in public -- "

Mike gives him a dry look. "He's a _cop_. Would you stop a cop dragging someone into the back of a patrol car?"

Harvey is careful around this, but he has to ask. "Do you think he's capable of that?"

"I think he thinks I'm still a fifteen year old kid," Mike says. "When I saw him that's how I felt, too."

"Well, you're surrounded by wannabe lawyers," Harvey replies, crossing to the window, looking out on the street. "Call a couple of them, have them walk you to school tomorrow. If -- " he stops.

"If what?" Mike asks.

Harvey is looking down at the street, dimly lit by the lamps, at a figure in a blue uniform below.

"Well, he definitely knows where we live," he says quietly. "He's downstairs."

"What?" Mike asks, voice rising. "What if someone lets him in? Harvey -- "

"We're going to put a stop to it before that happens," Harvey replies, pulling his coat back on. "I'm going down -- "

"No, Harvey -- "

"Trust me, Mike," Harvey says. "You can stay here or put on your shoes and come down with me. I won't let him hurt you."

Mike looks terrified.

"You stay here, that's okay," Harvey adds. "I wouldn't make you do that, Mike. I wouldn't expect you to."

Harvey has a fancy new cellphone the DA's office issued him, and in that cellphone he has a number on speed dial. And when he calls that number, well, a certain phone will ring.

He also has a baseball bat. It's a handy tool, a baseball bat. You can walk down the street with one without a permit. There's no snow league in New York like there was in Cambridge, but Harvey goes to the batting cages sometimes.

He picks up the bat and puts the phone in his pocket, and he's at the door when Mike says, "Wait," and bumps up against him, pulling on his boots. They're shitkicking Doc Martens that Harvey said weren't sensible snow boots and couldn't be worn with a suit, either, but Mike just had to have them.

"Okay," Mike says, still looking terrified. Harvey nods, because this is Mike's choice, and whatever else Mike might be, he's a stubborn brat when he believes he's doing the right thing. Boots: case in point.

They go down a flight of stairs, Harvey with his bat and Mike in his boots, and Harvey opens the front door of the building, stepping out onto the paved walkway that leads to the street. The light from the door draws Eric Ross's attention. Mike's still standing behind it, but Harvey grins sharply at Mike's father and says, "Hey there, buttercup."

The absurdity of the phrase gives him just enough time, confuses Ross just enough, that he can continue. "Remember me? Harvey Specter. We met in court."

"I want to see Mike," Ross says, without preamble.

"Deja vu," Harvey replies. He lets the bat fall from his shoulder, propping it on the sidewalk, palm resting on the flare of the handle. "Mike doesn't want to see you."

"What, still can't talk for himself?" Ross asks, eyeing the bat. He's in uniform. He's wearing his belt, where he has mace and a gun. Harvey wonders idly if Officer Eric Ross is on duty.

"Doesn't have to," Harvey answers. "I thought we could have a little talk first."

"He's eighteen now. An adult. He can make his own decisions."

"I'm so glad you understand that," Harvey informs him. "It's going to make my life that much easier. Because, see, Mike _is_ eighteen. And if you go near him, or follow him, or put a hand on him, it's not parental rights anymore. You know what it is?" he leans forward just a little, the bat comes off the ground, and Ross's eyes track it again. "That's harassment and assault, Officer Ross."

"Mike!" Ross calls, and Mike emerges, standing in front of the door. "Come on, son, man up. You don't want to talk to me, tell me yourself."

"Seriously?" Harvey asks. "Man up? That's what you have to say to him?"

Ross tries to dodge, but Harvey blocks him, the bat now raised slightly.

"You assault an officer, you'll rot in prison," Ross warns.

"Nah," Harvey says. "You should have done your homework, Eric. Because see..." he takes his phone out. "I work for the DA's office now. And if you think cops are fraternal, you should see the way lawyers close ranks."

"Mike!" Ross calls again. Harvey doesn't look back.

"Let me explain to you how this is going to work," Harvey says instead, swinging the bat just slightly --

And Ross steps back.

Because he might be a cop and he might be a bully but picking on the innocent is a little different from picking on a grown man with a three-foot hank of polished maple wood in his hand and absolutely no fear in his eyes.

Which is how Harvey knows this is going to work.

"You're going to walk away from this, and you're going to stay away," Harvey says. "You're not going to follow Mike to school, and you're not going to loiter outside of his classroom hiding behind a badge that lets you go where you want. Because the alternative is that I call your boss right now," he adds, holding up the phone, with its little illuminated screen that reads _Precinct Captain_ and lists a number Ross will recognize, the number of his commanding officer, "and get you in a whole mess of trouble. And if you come back, well, then we get a restraining order, which is very easy for me, because -- I mentioned I work for the DA's office, right? I know all these judges..." he shrugs. "Abuse of power, nepotism maybe, but what can you do?"

"Listen, I just want to talk to my son -- "

"And then, if you violate the restraining order, rest assured, I'll have your badge just to start with. And if I can't have your badge..." Harvey hefts the bat lightly. "I'll break your fucking legs."

Ross refocuses on him sharply.

"I will beat you until it hurts to breathe," Harvey says, his voice low and calm. "I'll put you in the hospital for a month. After all, I'm pretty sure your son would give me an alibi. Wouldn't you, Mike?" he calls.

There's a moment of silence, and then Mike laughs.

"Sure, Harvey," Mike replies. "Any night you need it."

"Michael," Ross says, grief in his voice.

"Go away," Mike says clearly. He's almost directly behind them now, Harvey can hear that; Mike ducks around Harvey's shoulder and he can see him out of the corner of his eye. "I'm eighteen now. You can't get me back."

"Brave boy," Harvey murmurs.

It's Harvey's thoughtless speech, the approval in his voice, that sets Ross off; with a snap of leather and metal he draws his gun, and Harvey's looking down the barrel of a police-issue firearm.

He is genuinely in fear of his life, and he thinks later he's probably going to have dreams about this moment. But he still lifts the phone to his ear and presses _call_. All three of them can hear it ringing, hear a female voice answer.

Ross lowers his gun. Harvey hits _end_.

"Can't we talk?" Ross pleads with Mike.

"No," Mike says. "We haven't got anything to talk about, Dad."

"I kept your stuff, Mike, your room's just -- "

Mike cuts him off. "Do I look like I need a place to sleep?"

"Michael!"

"I'm in college, Dad. I have a place. I don't need anything from you. I don't _want_ anything from you. I want you to _leave me alone_ ," Mike says, volume increasing with each word. He takes a step forward and to Harvey's delight, Ross takes another step back. " _GO AWAY!_ " Mike yells.

"You little son of a bitch," Ross snarls. He pulls back to swing, raises his arm -- and Mike, bless his scrappy, ill-treated soul, sucker-punches his father in the gut.

There's eighteen years of rage and fear behind the swing, and the knowledge that this one punch has to count for all of it.

Ross doubles over with a surprised noise. Mike looks shocked, looks down at his own hand.

"I think you made your point," Harvey says gently to Mike, while Ross struggles for breath. "Head inside. I'll be there in a moment."

Mike looks at him, nods smartly, and turns his back on his father. The door snicks shut behind him.

Ross is straightening, slowly, unbending, wheezing, and Harvey props the blunt end of the bat under his chin.

"Do not mistake me for someone who fears you," he says. "Or your badge, or your gun. I don't want to see your face again. Cross me or mine and I will put you in a world of pain for the rest of your life. And _then_ I'll let Mike have a turn. Are we understood?"

He hikes the bat slightly. Ross lifts his chin.

Harvey lets the bat slide through his fingers, stepping back. Ross still has his gun in his hand, but then again Harvey still has his phone in his.

There are no last words, no threats. Ross just holsters his gun, and Harvey lowers the bat a little more, and then Officer Eric Ross walks away.

Inside, Mike is waiting for him, sitting on the stairs.

"You got a mean right jab," Harvey tells him, passing him the bat. Mike scrambles up the stairs after him, bat on his shoulder. "I don't think your dad's gonna be back any time soon."

"I would, you know," Mike manages.

"Would what?"

"Give you an alibi."

"I wouldn't make you, kid," Harvey answers. "He's not worth the risk."

"Then why'd you say all that?"

Harvey shrugs. "People like him, they don't believe anyone could be better than them."

"I hit him," Mike says, as Harvey follows him into their apartment -- their little apartment, where Mike has a bedroom with an _American Beauty_ poster on one wall and a poster of Charles H. Houston on the other, where Harvey's small but growing record collection is slowly devouring their communal bookshelf, where there's a burn mark on the ceiling over the stove from Mike's one disastrous attempt at learning to deep fry.

"I think you were owed a few," Harvey replies, settling on the couch. Mike drops down next to him, and Harvey slides an arm around his shoulders.

"You totally went all Godfather on him," Mike says eventually. "You were like, _let me make you an offer you can't refuse._ "

"Well, you know how it is," Harvey says, preening a little internally. "Gotta look after family."

They don't sleep till late that night. In the morning, just in case, Harvey doesn't leave Mike's side until he's safely in his first class. He's late, and both Donna and Cameron take it out of his hide, but that's all right.

It is January the ninth, 2001, a Tuesday. Mike is eighteen. Harvey is twenty-five. And though they don't know it yet, though they share a city with him, it's the last time either of them will see Eric Ross.

The future is unfolding before them, ripe with promise. As hard as they were, Harvey knows neither he nor Mike would trade the last few years for anything.

END

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